Who we are

PAWA Initiative is a Non-Profit established in Kenya in 2009. It is Kenya’s unique art and cultural collaborative hub that houses, fosters and catalyzes creative and community-driven projects for social change. The acronym “PAWA” is Swahili corruption for “power” while”254” is Kenya’s international telephone code.

PAWA has cut a niche as a bold ‘artivism’ organization that creatively integrates art and activism to promote active civic participation, livelihoods and employment development for Kenyan youth. PAWA leverages the power of arts to strengthen understanding and exploration of emerging issues in Kenya and increase youth involvement in positive development processes.

PAWA ‘s vision is to facilitate a bold, innovative and thriving art and media landscape to create social change in Kenya.

Our work is centered around two Main Thematic Areas

This entails developing the capacity of emerging artists and facilitating the integration of this artistic expression for livelihoods development. This entails investment in innovative learning and capacity building efforts to convene and activate artivists through Active Artistic Expressions. This is coupled with provision of a state of the art co working space that consists of creative suites for artists and professional equipment such as camera, lighting, and other media production equipment, opportunities for arts skill transfer, mentorship and partnerships.
We use art as a form of civic engagement through dance, poetry, graffiti, theatre, music, writing, film and photography to spark civic participation through focusing attention on emerging social concerns in the country and in the process prompt action. Through art and media PAWA brings forward unheard voices in public discourses and convenes groups of people with divergent views through provision of physical, psychological, experiential and intellectual spaces conducive to reflection and discussion.
Awaken citizen consciousness through Active Artistic Expressions.
Active Citizens driving change.
12
Staff
100
Trained Community Members
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COUNTIES REACHED
3
SPACES

Our Theory of Change

We bring artists together, after which our programs/platforms/events are strategically designed to offer value (skills) to the artists.
We then give the artists knowledge by providing an environment of constant learning (indoctrination through projects) which causes or accelerates the creative process.
We then co-create work together with the artists in a way that enhances ownership of the production then publish the output.
This involves making the production (Active Artistic Expression) public.
We then find out what the effects of leveraging art as a tool to catalyze meaningful citizen action and demand for change are.
The last step is validating our theory of change by documenting the actions taken and the resulting changes, and sharing them as widely as we can.