Implications of social protection in urban poverty reduction: A case study of Kazi Kwa Vijana (Work for Youth) in Kenyan slums

This research explores the implications of social protection in urban poverty reduction; in particular the study focuses on public works programmes as a component of broader social protection programmes in Kenya. While explor-ing the implications the study pays attention to community participation, targeting procedures as well as synergies in relation to KKV programme. This focus is informed by the fact that active community participation is very crucial in poverty reduction strategies. Contrary, development interventions have been engaging the poor passively which is basically associated with top down approaches thus treating them as dormant actors rather than equal partners. Notably, the study focuses on a case study of Kazi kwa Vijana (KKV) Swahili for Work for Youth Work, this is a public work programme that was initiated by the Government of Kenya in 2009 that targeted the youth with an overall aim of providing labor intensive work in return get a minimum wage for their daily upkeep. Considering that the Kenyan youth constitute 78.31 % of the entire national population, the initiative targeted this population cluster (youth). Additionally, the study focus was motivated by the zest to know whether the initiative managed in any way to improve livelihoods among the slum dwellers as one of its intended objective. Notably, the KKV targeting process was meant to be self-targeting based on first come first serve, despite the planned self-targeting mechanisms the implementers were forced to use the village elders to identify the neediest in situations where the vacancies were few than the applicants. Despite the great role played by the village elders in the participants‟ selection, the findings indicates that the process was not smooth in the sense that 36% of the total respondents cited that it was based on corruption and nepotism. Particularly, while exploring the level of community participation and synergies I focused on the informal community networks and how these net-works can create synergies to improve livelihoods consequently reducing poverty.