P.O. Box 11372
Mt. Meru Post Office
Arusha, Tanzania
[email protected]
ccr-tz.org
Concept note: Equipping young people to break cycles
of violence
CCR equips people to resolve the moral dilemmas that they face when trying to do the right thing
and equips young people to be the drivers of a rising Africa.
The Need
In a rapidly changing Tanzania, young peoples’ interests are being sidelined and they are illequipped to become responsible citizens. 64% of Tanzanians are under 25 years and the chances of
Tanzania becoming a middle-income country reside in their energy.
There is insufficient investment in child protection services and the case is not being effectively
made that violence and trauma inhibit children’s ability to learn and thus undermine the investments
that the Government is making in education.
The Hypothesis
Adolescence is a window of opportunity to lay down new social norms about our responsibilities
to protect others and ourselves from violence.
Youth is the point in the life course where individuals determine who they are and where they
are going; think more abstractly about ‘who I am,’ ‘what might be,’ and ‘what is best for society’;
discover and form their psychological selves; undertake spiritual exploration; and learn to integrate
their own needs with those of others.
Our solution
The solution helps Tanzanian secondary school students in urban centers to transition from an
egoic concern with themselves to a wider social concern with others. The intervention will be
developed, empirically tested and evaluated in a face- to-face setting and then will be adapted so
that it can be delivered via a mobile app.
The intervention is informed by ethnographic research into the experience of being a young
person in Tanzania and its design is informed by the principles and practices of Participatory Action
Research, Narrative Therapy, Integral Activism and the Protective Behaviors approach. This
intervention aligns with Arusha City Child Protection plan, particularly their target to build safe
schools and to act on abuse.
Young people engage in supportive self-inquiry to explore their own strengths, passions and
dreams, deepen their understanding of how they bring themselves to relationships and how others
experience them. They connect with their bodies and emotions so that they can become less reactive
in moments of stress. Working together they inquire into why people behave as they do, and work
together to create and present multi-media stories about their findings. Finally they generate ideas
about how to address the barriers that prevent them and their peers from being their best selves.
They test these in their schools and communities as forms of citizen action. Students from different
schools then come together collectively to share their experiences, ideas and successes in a process
of collective learning and idea fertilization.
Objectives
Immediate objective: To increase the resilience of 600 secondary school students.
Indicated by: Participants report a reduction in anxiety; overcome adversities and demonstrate
healthy trajectories in their lives.
Medium term objective: To support secondary school students to transition into young adulthood.
Indicated by: Shifts in participants’ moral thinking from a concern with “What do I need to do to
be seen as good by others?” to a concern with “What is my responsibility as a member of society?”
Long-term objective: Widen the circle of care so that young people become protectors.
Indicated by: Participants reporting that they have taken action to protect themselves, protect other
children, and ultimately protect their own children.
Deliverables
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Prototype and test of a micro-pilot with students from ISMAC & Okesswa schools [2016].
Ethnographic study into the experience of being a young person in Tanzania conducted
annually [2015 - 2019].
Review of the literature on moral development to identify the lines of moral development
that will be tracked in this study [2017].
Evaluation of micro-pilot [Aug 2016].
Ongoing advocacy with Arusha city council, Ministry of Education (MoE) and District
Education Offices to get buy-in and permission for the project.
Research design for the Randomized Control Test developed with Fielding University and
Susan Connolly [http://www.tappingtft.com]. [Q2&3 - 2017].
Annual training of facilitators [2017, 2018 and 2019].
Research design for the longitudinal impact study developed with Fielding University [2017].
Femina Hip, CiC & Restless Development involved in design and delivery of intervention from
the outset [2017 - 2019].
Criteria for school selection agreed with District Education Office and schools selected round
1 of intervention [Q3 2017]
Youth Facilitators trained in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in TFT and in how to facilitate the
intervention.
Two iterations of the 16 week F2F intervention delivered to students [2017 & 2018].
Results of RCT analyzed [2017 & 2018].
Sustainability and roll out plan for the mobile app developed [2018].
F2F intervention adapted for a mobile platform [2018].
Conduct RCT on mobile app's impact [2019].
Strategize and seek funding for design and roll out of intervention to rural youth [2018].
Conduct longitudinal study of to analyze long-term impact on participants’ and facilitators’
behavior as young adults and new parents [2017-2027].
Potential for scale
There are five avenues through which the intervention could be scaled up. These are via:
1. Civil society partners who work with youth in Tanzania and have access to thousands of youth via
their own interventions.
2. City child protection plans that are being developed and resourced over the next five years under
CCR's youth governance initiative in Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Mbeya.
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3. Tanzania Institute of Education & Ministry of Education integrating the intervention into the
civics curricula.
4. Universities that offer diplomas and degrees in community development, including Mwl. Nyerere
Memorial College, Aga Khan University & Makumira Tumaini University.
5. A mobile app that offers the intervention to young people directly.
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