From ICS alumni to Active Citizen: Eight years on, the impact of ICS on a volunteer from Kenya

I always think of myself as an ambassador for ICS because of how ICS was structured and its impact on me. With clear onboarding and orientation processes, the project enabled volunteers to understand cultural diversity, teamwork, and community integration. In Mwatate, I was involved in a Youth and Livelihoods project, supporting young people through identified youth groups to enhance and accelerate their livelihood sources while based at Mwatate District Stakeholders Forums (MDSF).

A team of up to 24 volunteers, we were based with various community organizations, government departments and groups known as placements contributing towards the bigger ICS project in Mwatate livelihoods.

At MDSF, I supported two youth groups to strengthen their livelihoods sources through value addition activities. For the first group, I investigated aspects of financial literacy, marketing of the products. I engaged with two schools in implementing an Education Empowerment Project aimed at addressing the high school dropout rates, drugs, and substance abuse cases.       

Through this project two days a week, I planned, delivered, and evaluated life skills empowerment mentorship sessions.

The whole project lasted for three months, how easy was this for you to organise and facilitate multiple projects during this time?

It wasn’t! Within such a short timeline and having a lot going on and expected. I focused on understanding the challenges/dynamics and immediately sought to design and implement interventions that spoke to them.            

I coordinated four small-size projects over this period. The Education Empowerment aimed to address the high rate of school dropout and teenage pregnancies within local secondary schools turned out to be very impactful.       

I worked with the guidance and counselling department to identify attributable changes within the students. These were as simple as attitudinal, behavioural, high tidiness, or early reporting times.

Collaboration and partnership, proper planning with a clear work plan, and an Evaluation plan enabled this. Resource mobilisation targeting the private and corporate actors in Mwatate enabled us to secure resources in terms of stationery, pens, pencils, and mathematical sets to award the identified learners.

In addition to this, I collaborated with my host home counterpart resource mobilising through online platforms enabling us to design and develop up to four projects with our groups. This ranged from the construction of chicken coups, to supporting agricultural projects.  

What was your experience of working with your team counterparts from the UK?

It was a great experience. I had both a home host (Hussein) and a placement counterpart (Laura) with incredible experience. Hussein was great in media and blogging, something I learned a lot from him. Laura exposed me to equality and gendered conversations, integrating these into the Education Empowerment project.

What changes have you observed in the community since the project began? 

I was satisfied with the project outcomes because at that moment the design of my project aimed to evaluate majorly qualitative changes, which were reported and confirmed by the school department. The feedback and appreciation from the learners were satisfying as well.

In addition to this, it was gratifying to witness the physical project developed with Hussein. We achieved the social and behavioural change among the learners targeted by the Education Empowerment Project.

In terms of the community's perspective, there was so much curiosity about what we had to offer. I think curiosity is value-added; that way you do have someone's attention, they listen to you. How you leverage defines everything else.

A very welcoming community saw us participate in community activities such as cultural activities, festivities, and weddings, just for that exposure for them to learn, to expose us to what is happening in the community. 

What gets me up out of bed is that desire to keep on designing interventions that speak to the communities.”   

Could you walk us through a typical day or activity you worked on? 

There were three scenarios of a typical day.  Monday to Thursday we would be at placements implementing the various project activities. On these days, I would engage in field visits to the target groups in the morning hours, and afternoons would see me engage in networking and partnership activities in the local town.

For example, I was working with groups that needed a value addition component. I would try to secure markets for these products. In the Education Empowerment Project, I started to resource mobilise to award my mentee students. Some days would see the whole team meet to catch up and support each other. 

Fridays would see us meet for the weekly Active Citizenship Days; an opportunity for all volunteers to lead activities on any global issues. One day I led an Active Citizenship Day whereby all the volunteers came to my placement, and I led a whole group of engagements.

Saturdays brought along fun, team-building activities. The social committee would organise outdoor activities ranging from team swimming, hiking, etc.  Sundays were personal days where I got to do personal cleaning, rest, and plan for the new week. Sometimes I would accompany my host family to church. Across the week, I would support in making meals and doing any household chores. 

Did you have the flexibility and autonomy to decide what to speak about?

The objective of the Active Citizenship Days was to help us become Active Citizens. That means give an opportunity to be as open as possible and give space to what you really want to do. As a volunteer to decide what you want to do and what you want to the rest of the team to be. The programme gives you the leniency to present this idea to the team leaders, who will support you in structuring it into a plan a week before.  

The Active Citizenship Day was a perfect opportunity for a volunteer to accelerate and strengthen such skills as personal time management, finances control, and planning because you had to plan everything and later report on it. 

How does your definition of an active citizen differ from what you think today and when you were in the ICS programme?

Yes, I think the definition has changed but from a growth perspective. I think of active citizenship from various angles.  My definition of active citizenship back then was your ability as a person to identify an issue and do something about that issue at your level.

When I was a volunteer, active citizenship was an opportunity for me to look at an issue design a project, or an activity, and implement it. That has metamorphosized for me over the years so that now I'm looking at active citizenship as an ability for me to support someone working in this domain"

Over time, my curiosity about the design, management, and evaluation of interventions got the better of me. With this backdrop, and my current roles, active citizenship means the ability to enable young people to accelerate change. I practice this through mentoring several young people sharing opportunities.

Can you recall a specific experience that made the biggest impact on you? 

My affiliation with ICS is threefold - as an ICS volunteer, ICS team leader, and then ICS programme administrator. As a volunteer, the feedback from the mentees in the Education Empowerment project catapulted my fulfilment.  

As a team leader, managing and supporting the volunteers, feedback from the volunteers during the mid-phase review was a milestone. Supporting six teams comprising an average of 24 volunteers each, this feedback always lit a new flame in me.

As a Project Administrator, I sought to ensure the project realized the intended impact on the target community. I possess a clear memory of the joy, appreciation and gratitude expressed by Kathiani Youth Group in Machakos, whom the project support access affirmative funds and set up a resilient car wash business.

What do you think you wouldn’t be doing today, if it wasn't for that experience with ICS?

Thanks to ICS, I have witnessed growth across four areas. One was on cross-cultural.

The experience opened my thought process and ability to embrace and obtain new perspectives, getting to understand and be sensitive to other people's needs, enhancing my empathy levels and other personal values and competencies like time management and personal planning. This has consequently strengthened my beliefs on gender and gender roles.  

What would you tell someone considering joining VSO or a youth volunteering programme like ICS? 

A youth programme like ICS is an incubation for your ideas and personal growth. It will help you define and test what you really want. The programme enables you to perfect technical as well as soft skills. Its design offers you maximum support, enabling you leverage the 12 weeks.

Where do you see yourself in the next chapter of your life and in the next few years? 

What keeps me awake and gets me up out of bed is that desire to keep on intentionally designing interventions that speak to the communities.

I strive to improve every day, perfecting my programming proficiency to keep on meaningfully engaging young people in design, implementation, and evaluation for maximum impact. In my next chapter, I see myself designing and coordinating youth interventions at a regional, and continental scale."

VSO's Youth Networks

VSO works with over 5,000 young people globally who are bringing about lasting change in the communities we operate. These young people are our regional champions, advocates and campaigners. VSO has youth networks operating in 17 counties across Asia Pacific, Africa and Europe.

Learn more about youth networks

About ICS

ICS was funded by the UK Government's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Between 2011-2020, VSO and our partners supported over 40,000 ICS volunteers to contribute to sustainable change, working alongside community members in some of the poorest regions of the world.

The UK government announced in April 2023, that a new ICS programme will be launched in the coming year. The previous contract for ICS, led by VSO, came to an end in December 2020.