Welcome to community stories of modern slavery in Migori County, Kenya

Community Stories of Modern Slavery from Migori County, Kenya – Empowering voices
and sharing knowledge for change through community media is a Phase 2 project of the Antislavery Knowledge Network (AKN)  funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The purpose of AKN Phase 2 projects is to investigate modern slavery as a development challenge by “creating innovative approaches from the Arts and Humanities and deliver community-engaged antislavery work” (AKN, 2019. p2).

Community Stories Academic Team. From left to right – Enoch Mac’Ouma, Peter Day, Isabel Zattu & Jerry Agalo

The academic team of investigators for this Phase 2 project comprised a Principle Investigator from the University of Brighton and Co-Investigators from the University of Rongo. This team has been collaborating with the community of Cham gi Wadu on a range of community media-based projects through a community media partnership network – Community Media 4 Kenya (CM4K). It was from the seeds of these CM4K collaborations that a research partnership with a community-based organisation (CBO) called Cham gi Wadu 4 Umoja emerged

The name of the community (Cham gi wadu) means ‘eat’ or ‘share’ with your neighbour in Dholuo. The naming of the community came about as a consequence of historic tribal fueding between the neighbouring Luo & Kissi tribes. The community location sits on the tribal borders of  Luo and Kissi lands.In order to ameliorate tribal bitternesses, raiding, rustling and fighting, the market location of Cham gi wadu was developed so that tribal neighbours could come together to trade, eat and communicate with one another in peace. ‘Umoja’ means togetherness in Swahili. The name decided upon by the community for their group was ‘Cham gi wadu 4 umoja’. It is an amalgamation of Dholuo and Swahili languages intended to describe the community-based organisation they established to share ideas, knowledge and resources for the betterment of their lived experiences through community communications. They are currently working on developing a community radio station in partnership with the University of Rongo. The University of Brighton funded the purchase of the first studio, which is based on the Rongo campus. CM4K continues to work with Cham gi wadu 4 umoja to build a second studio in Cham gi wadu so that issues such as modern slavery can be raised and discussed within the community in order to drive transformational changes that improve their lives. The project team are eager that the stories collected during this project, together with the capacity and capability building activities of the project’s participatory learning processes will raise awareness of the damaging impacts surrounding modern slavery. We also hope to illustrate how, whilst often hidden in plain sight and not understood as modern slavery, community media can be appropriated to advocate and campaign for meaningful social change.