We believe education has a direct link to youth empowerment, and hence seek to build the capacities of the youth, through an enhanced access education, especially by the poor, to quality education at an affordable cost. We do this by providing extra curricula learning opportunities, career guidance and counselling workshops in various deprived schools and districts. At a policy level, we conduct research, in order to come out with concrete policy alternatives to government on critical issues that have the potential to affect quality and access to education, through press releases and policy briefs.

In the area of water, sanitation and health, we seek to eliminate all personal, environmental and public health risks faced by poor communities, through public health education campaigns, community-led clean-up exercises and Behaviour Change Communication programmes. Through research, we also identify potential public health threats and thereby offer appropriate policy recommendations to relevant government agencies for necessary action.

We work to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on poor rural populations with an emphasis on young women and girls, who are normally the worst affected. We directly engage women and young girls in alternative livelihood skills training programmes, such as weaving, hairdressing, and tailoring. Recently, we encourage young girls to enter into IT-related and predominantly male vocations, such as phone repairs, satellite TV installation and repairs as well as Computer Skills.

CEDEPA’s interest in democracy, citizen engagement and social accountability, is strongly founded on our commitment to the advancement of good governance and participatory democracy, which finds meaningful expression in competitive, free and fair elections. We work to ensure transparency and accountability in the governance process through top-down and bottom-up approaches. By means of advocacy, we effectively engage with policy makers in a manner that is constructive and ensures that, public decisions are in the best interest of the citizenry. In a bottom-up fashion, we aggregate citizens’ concerns and interests and communicate same to duty bearers through constructive and evidence-based advocacy work.

We work to promote peaceful communities and reduce conflict and political violence, particularly during elections, through a multi-stakeholder approach. We engage key stakeholders, such as young people, political party youth and women groups as well as religious and traditional leaders in the peaceful building and conflict resolution processes. We organise training works for key stakeholders on the early warning signs and detection of electoral violence, during competitive national elections.