 My name is Munira Hamise. I'm 26. Well, fortunately I was born bread educated and I hope I get married in Mombasa. I love the spicy foods. I also love the ocean and life is nice. My name is Nikola Tsongora. I am 29 years old. I love Mombasa and one fact is because I was born and raised here. We have people from different religions, different ethnic groups, different cultural backgrounds. Kenya has a youth bulge. In Mombasa to be specific, our population goes up to a million, 1.5 million and almost 85% of it is youths. The community kind of see youths as a challenge. They find themselves marginalized. Adequalization has damaged families. During the year 2013-2014 I lost a friend. He was in the mosque when the police came in. They showed several youth he passed on. He was a close person to me and he asked myself how many youths will we be losing? The Generation Change Fellows program engages youth who have founded youth led organizations and are working to build bridges across communities to address challenges related to peace and security. Lonama was founded by a group of volunteers and our main aim was to capacity build and empower youths in terms of peace and the need for community dialogue. We have been able to implement a number of activities so far. It's still growing. I decided to initiate a youth led organization known as Maniata Youth Entertainment CBO. We started as a theatre based arts group where they provoke discussions on issues affecting them. We are setting up a youth friendly cultural center where youth from different background diversity could have our own trainings could have our own rehearsals at the center owned by the community and the youth from the community. The Generation Change Fellows program decided to integrate participatory action research into its curriculum because we believe that youth should be at the front and center of informing the youth peace and security agenda. It's about putting youth at the center of peace building efforts. We wanted to produce knowledge in the community. There's certainly been lots of work around violent extremism in these cities in Kenya but really not from the community level. Usually it's somebody coming in from outside the community doing the research and what they're learning is going to look and sound a bit different than people and experiencing those problems every day. This kind of work has been around for about 40 years now. It's nothing we created but a well established methodology for working with communities and working with people outside the academy. Kenya was a great place to pilot this project. We had a series of 12 engagements four of which were face to face and the other engagements we supported virtually. Community youth researchers were involved from the very beginning. The process has seen news who actually dropped out of school. Some of them have not had any formal education. These are youth who are already part of our generation change fellows networks. The youth are given an opportunity to lead in all processes in the study. This gives the youth a chance to do something positive. It's a platform that gives power back to the community. The question that the youth have formulated was what is the role of the community in mitigating youth involvement in vante extremism and juvenile gang groups within Mombasa County. We used opening learning circles. We also used world cafes where they would write what they would feel is their response and we also used theaters over press. This process has helped the youth researchers to actually learn more about democracy and active citizenship. So they are engaging parents. They are engaging local government officials. They are engaging local humanitarian actors. Everyone is being invited to offer their input as well as a possible solution. Collectively the process of participatory action research is in itself building peace. Most of the youths are not engulfed in the church. We come up with political instability extrem poverty and tribalism. That analysis was quite the highlight and it gave out a clear structure of the entire research process. For me the lack of proper parenting skills that was the most important findings of them all. Police brutality I remember was also I think that was the second in line after poor parenting. Police brutality in Mombasa and it doesn't stop then we will not see the end of the gangs neither will we see the end of radicalization. The youths shared the research with the community through a community share back event. It was an audience filled up of every kind of stakeholder that you had touched. It was a 45 minutes play that actually had every finding within one of the scenes. It has a message and it's touching on the people and they feel it. The youths have great talents. They do not have a good platform where they can express their issues easily without fear. We need to engage more and give them that space. I believe the community now have a different picture in all matters concerning the community you must involve the youth. I learned so much from the part process it gave me courage. I used to have the loss infestim as far as democracy is concerned I used to say I'm still young, I'm still growing I feel like I had an influence I think the government right now the perception that they have towards the youths has really changed. It's now on the positive side. They would walk up to the deputy county commission and actually book an appointment to meet him and while they're asking questions they're having tea, laughing and they were like wow, you know. They were seen as experts they had data and they could present their data with integrity. At the end of this participatory action research project the youth published their findings and that's something really unique that is not seen in the youth piece of security space very often. The report really helps in advising participatory research is what every government should use Mombasa has unique problems that will require unique solutions and when you have data people understand that this is actually supported. That when they present it to government leaders, to foundations, to NGOs to international organizations there's a clear process for how that knowledge was created and it's also put into a format that's accessible and recognized by these official organizations. To my organization pastoral action research is a part of our program now. We use it as our research ontology our youth had opportunity for them to make their own promises on what they are going to immediately start doing to influence the change that is needed. Lonamak is using participatory action research the pledges that the youths made were one to try and change the findings into positive narratives. They pledged to actually work with mamas help them to bring up their sons how to strengthen their families it has been one of the greatest experiences for me as a peace practitioner I got a job at the county government which I'm actually really happy about. I'm the director for prevention countering of violence extremism. My dream is to exist in a society that is one peaceful two there's respect for human rights and three the citizenry is actually empowered. I'm kind of living my dream having young people participate in research work this is what I always wanted to see. I have more than hope for our youth in Mombasa.