SDG4IMPACT: Youth Led SDG Training for the Mukuru Community in Nairobi

By Kennedy Karanja, Organising Lead, Young World Federalists – East Africa

After a diplomatic negotiations workshop on 26 July 2025, the twenty-six participants and the organisers held a virtual debrief in early August to assess whether the training had met its objectives. The mood was optimistic, and there was strong enthusiasm for organising a diplomatic simulation in August 2025. Even so, participants raised concerns about the sustainability of the initiative. They stressed that they wanted the outcomes of future simulations to lead to real action. They did not want another meeting that would be forgotten as soon as the final group photograph was taken. They wanted to be part of a process, not an isolated event.

The organisers, a coalition led by YWF East Africa, returned to the drawing board to design a programme that matched these expectations. Evans Ijakaa, who had supported public communications for the July workshop and was serving as Strategic Communications and Resource Mobilisation Lead for the Young World Federalists Kenya chapter, proposed extending the training. His idea was to introduce weekly virtual Training of Trainers sessions, bringing in experts from academia, civil society, government, intergovernmental bodies and the private sector. These sessions would deepen participants’ knowledge not only of negotiations within boardrooms and policy spaces, but also of what it takes to implement decisions on the ground. The organisers endorsed this approach by consensus.

After further discussion, we agreed to focus on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, which remain universally recognised and increasingly urgent as the 2030 deadline approaches. We chose Mukuru Slums in Nairobi, where Evans grew up, as the pilot site. This was the beginning of what would become the Mukuru SDG Sensitisation programme. Our aim was to run a six-week ToT series, after which the trainees would travel to Mukuru to advocate for locally led SDG action, collect data to inform Nairobi County and national implementation plans, and build their professional portfolios as global SDG advocates.

By late August, we had a clear plan and began circulating invitations to both the July workshop participants and the wider public. On 17 and 18 September 2025, we held virtual debrief sessions to introduce the vision, outline roles and responsibilities, create synergy through dialogue and questions, and present the project leads from the Young World Federalists East Africa chapter, the Strathmore Environmental Sustainability Community, the UN Global Compact’s Principles for Responsible Management Education network, Tendet Foundation and Strathmore Law School. More than one hundred people attended across the two days.

We then transitioned to the training sessions, designed to ensure participants gained a strong grounding in the SDGs. As Ian Abuki of the UN Global Compact PRME team put it, we cannot effectively advocate for what we are not fully familiar with.

Over six weeks, we held weekly virtual ToT sessions that were both educational and community-building. Participants introduced themselves, networked, and shared their social media pages in the chat. We created a WhatsApp community for continued engagement, and shared the full training schedule, the SDG Campaign Project Concept Note and weekly links through our mailing list.

Phase One: The Training of Trainers (ToT) project

The first phase of the Mukuru SDG Awareness campaign officially began on 25 September 2025. Professor Izael Da Silva, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Strathmore University, delivered the opening session, giving an orientation and overview of the SDGs. He distilled insights from his long career with clarity and humour, making complex ideas accessible and offering guidance on where young people can find opportunities to support SDG implementation. Participants described the session as deeply insightful, with one remarking that he felt inspired to do more, especially as an African.

Participants were given access to the recordings, the UN SDG Resource Hub prepared by the PRME team, and mandatory weekly assignments, which they needed to complete in order to graduate from the programme.

I led the second session on 2 October 2025, focusing on SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), drawing on my experience in the Civil Society Unit at the UN Environment Programme. I tailored the presentation to the realities of Mukuru Slums, covering poverty, inequality and inadequate housing, as well as successful case studies from civil society, county and national authorities, and development partners that could serve as blueprints for future progress.

The third week, on 9 October 2025, centred on SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). Grace Kamengere, Director of the Strathmore University Medical Centre, used her experience in healthcare to illustrate how sustainable development depends on public health, and how health in turn depends on water, sanitation and hygiene.

On 16 October 2025, Dr Abdishakur Tarah of Nottingham Trent University led the session on SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). He highlighted education’s power to uplift communities, the importance of education for sustainable development, and how curricula can integrate sustainability to encourage responsible lifestyles.

The penultimate session on 23 October 2025 featured Solomon Dodoo of the Youth Bridge Foundation and Ghana’s focal point in the Youth Adaptation Network under the Global Centre on Adaptation. He urged participants to recognise that climate change affects everyone, and encouraged creativity, collaboration and local solutions under SDG 13 (Climate Action).

The final session, on 30 October 2025, was dedicated to SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Anukriti Sharma of the Asian Environmental Youth Network and CitizenScience.Asia delivered a session on leadership, community engagement and data. She explained the three foundations of localisation: trust-building leadership, community engagement that promotes ownership, and ethical data collection that turns experience into evidence.

A snapshot of the SDG4IMPACT Conference Opening Session - 8 November 2025

The SDG4IMPACT Conference

Preparations for the first phase of the Mukuru SDG Awareness campaign were always meant to culminate in the SDG4IMPACT Conference, held in person at Strathmore University. The original date of 31 October 2025 was postponed to 8 November to give participants time to complete their sixth week assignment and allow the organisers time to review submissions and confirm which graduates would proceed to the on-the-ground second phase in Mukuru.

During the ToT project, we began considering the idea of integrating a follow-up diplomatic simulation, given that the last one had taken place on 11 January 2025. The ToT programme had grown from twenty-six people in July to over three hundred by October, and we sensed that many of the new participants could benefit from experiencing how policymaking works before taking part in community-based SDG advocacy.

"...we cannot effectively advocate for what we are not fully familiar with" - Ian Abuki, Regional Coordinator for Africa, UN-Global Compact's PRME

The proposal to add a simulation was enthusiastically supported by participants and partners, including the Young World Federalists and the Strathmore University School of Humanities and Social Sciences, who provided funding. The Strathmore Debate Society offered to train participants in debate skills, complementing their negotiation training, and to run a debate tournament as a side event during the conference. Finnet Foundation, Tendet Foundation, Strathmore University Non Profit, Social Enterprise and Philanthropy Hub, and Latewa CBO joined as implementing partners for phase two.

With these additions, the SDG4IMPACT Conference expanded into a two-day event on 8 and 9 November 2025, featuring the diplomatic simulation and debate tournament as side events. It was hosted at the Sir Thomas More Building at Strathmore Law School. Invitations went out to ToT graduates and the wider public, especially residents of Mukuru Slums.

Lessons learnt

Federalism offers an approach to global governance that values democratisation, transparency and subsidiarity. It seeks to expand participation in global policymaking to constituencies who are often excluded, including women, youth, indigenous peoples, workers, universities, civil society and sub-national governments. It calls for citizens to have a greater voice in international organisations so that they can act as a counterbalance to government policies that do not reflect people’s interests. It imagines global decision-making that is less secretive, more accessible, and more accountable. It also recognises that some problems, such as climate change, transcend national capacity and require strong supranational institutions, allowing national governments to focus on responsibilities that are best handled closer to home.

The United Nations is the closest existing institution resembling a potential federal structure, although it currently functions more like a confederation with limited subsidiarity and most authority residing with member states. Yet the UN still has significant soft power. The SDGs are a clear example of their capacity to shape national policy and mobilise collective action.

To make a compelling case for world federalism, we must begin at the grassroots. We must show communities how global decisions already affect their daily lives, and how stronger democratic global institutions could help solve the challenges they face. Through conversations in places like Mukuru, people start to see both the limits of relying solely on national governance and the potential of coordinated global action. This helps lay the foundation for transforming national citizens into global citizens.

The ToT programme showed us the value of localising SDG conversations. Although not explicitly federalist in content, it encouraged participants to think globally while working locally, connecting immediate community issues with the universal aspirations reflected in the SDGs. This is an essential first step in building a global citizen mindset.

Conclusion

The path to the SDG4IMPACT Conference has been both rewarding and demanding. In April 2025 we cancelled a diplomatic simulation and learned a difficult lesson: we could either limit ourselves to MUN style simulations that focus on procedure rather than substance, or commit to equipping our participants with deep knowledge of the issue areas they were tasked to simulate. We chose the latter, leading to the July workshop.

Building on that momentum, we developed a six week programme in September and October that introduced participants to the core issues in contemporary diplomacy. Participation grew dramatically, from twenty six attendees in July to more than one hundred and fifty graduates of the ToT programme in November. This demonstrated the value of meeting people where they are, introducing federalist ideas through concrete SDG training, then using that foundation to open minds to better alternatives to the present UN SDG system.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who supported us this year, from the January simulation to the November SDG4IMPACT Conference. It has been a year marked by challenges and progress, and I am glad to say we have emerged stronger.