Kampala, UGANDA – Open Space Center was formed in 2009 as a youth-led agency focused on providing opportunities for developing the expressive and debate capabilities of young people previously excluded from the frontiers of public decision-making. Open Space has over the years aspired to nurture the analytical and leadership potentials of youth and their meaningful engagement in public affairs. The organization has since developed into a fully-fledged and leading organization whose business embodies creating dynamic spaces to unlock young people’s (15-29) full potential to utilize opportunities and improve their wellbeing.
We are Open Space because that reflects what we do: we create dynamic spaces for young people to enhance their potential and constructively contribute to Uganda’s social, economic, and political development. Our activities are designed by young people to effectively engage young people to apply their creativity to make a difference. Furthermore, we always seek opportunities to work with other youth-focused stakeholders and like-minded organizations in order to maximize the impact of our activities.
With a vision of a society where young people have limitless opportunities and dignity, Open Space Centre has focused on a series of programs including the Annual National Youth Festival, the University Debate Nationals Championships, Project Soar, the Localizing SDGs Project, the Youth SDGs Awareness Program, the Youth Mentorship Program, and most recently, the Meaningful Youth Participation Program, and the Nile Explorer Bus Project.
Since the inaugural Youth Festival in 2011, the event has grown both in stature and importance, by instituting an annual unique multi-stakeholder year-long platform with inbuilt events and activities, where thousands of young people and youth-focused stakeholders come together to not only celebrate across age and diversity, youth energies, potentials, and innovativeness, but also influence youth policy agenda at various levels.
The Annual National Youth Festival is now recognized by the government as a distinctive platform to acclaim positive youth participation and review youth engagement actions in the country. The rollout, the main event, and the follow-up activities are convened by the Open Space Center in collaboration with partners.
The University Debate Nationals Championship also called “The Nationals” or #UDN, is an annual debate competition participated in by the brightest and best students from all universities in East Africa. During the competition, students give speeches, arguments, and policy proposals on current topical issues in the presence of a panel of judges and a preselected audience of fellow students and key stakeholders including civil society, the private sector, and policymakers among others. Besides the main championships, the tournament has been upgraded to feature a debate and leadership training academy, a series of issue-based public dialogues, and a Masters Invitational Debate featuring the best debaters in the country.
The Project Soar in a Box (PSB) provides local facilitators with all the tools they need to empower “squads” of teenage girls to understand their value, voice, body, rights and path. Project Soar trains local Facilitators to lead their girls through 35 workshops over the course of the school year. Graduates of PSB go on to join the Project Soar Girl Leader Club, a girl-led initiative that advocates for issues selected by and for the girls. The project was launched in Uganda in January 2019 and currently runs in 5 high schools in underserved communities in Kampala and Wakiso with 10 local facilitators and over 100 teenage girls activated.
The SDGs in Reality – Youth SDGs Awareness Program takes the SDGs to high schools, brings on board youth organizations working with SDGs at an even more local level, builds a pool of mentors for the goals, and provides opportunities for youth to take lead in the popularisation of the SDGs. The project seeks to get youth and their organizations in the public policy debate about the SDGs. It is basically, a youth-2-youth mobilization, using a time-tested debate method. This program is implemented in partnership with Crossing Borders a Danish-based CSO and is supported by CISU
The Youth Mentorship Program, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), provides young Ugandans with the tools and platforms to run for political office and prepare to participate meaningfully in elections. As elections approach, Open Space Centre responded to the growing optimism and desire among young Ugandans to shape the future of the country by designing and implementing a training and mentorship program for young people interested in running for office, establishing an online information service and media campaign and hosting debate competitions and policy dialogues to encourage meaningful youth political participation.
The Meaningful Youth Participation Program addresses the evident ineffective youth participation in governance and development processes in Uganda by strengthening the capacity of youth and youth leaders in the Local Government to be able to comprehend and positively contribute to processes that extend effective development opportunities to young people who take the lion’s share of their constituents. This project intends to extend the possibilities of youth leaders to advocate for and transform promises into realities by facilitating a deeper understanding of government processes and systems through which decisions that define the quality-of-life Ugandans are made. This project is implemented with support from the British High Commission under the Open Society Uganda Program.
During the period from 1st August to 30th November 2021, Open Space Centre kicked started the project with a series of activities including the stakeholder’s inception meeting, a symposium to commemorate the Africa Youth Day and create awareness around the opportunities for youth participation in the recently launched Parish development model.
The Nile Explorer Bus is a colorful mobile American Space on wheels by the U.S. Embassy in Uganda, implemented by Open Space Center – bringing Science, Technology Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning, as well as accurate health information on health issues such as HIV, School-Related Gender-Based Violence, and malaria among others – plus other forms of educational enrichment to young people across Uganda. The bus mainly focuses on extending these education opportunities to students aged 13 – 19 years in the underserved communities across several districts in Uganda including; Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono, Entebbe, Rakai, Sembabule, Gulu, and Amolatar.
The project on Localizing SDGs deems localization as the ability for the local grassroots – people, local governments, grassroots civil society groups, grocery stores, local bars, etc. to be able to know what the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are, their importance, how to get involved and participate in the SDGs agenda as duty and rights. This also facilitates that the different actors and participants see the need for working together towards achieving the goals as a key to the sustainable development of their communities.
This platform for Localizing SDGs focuses on the important task of localizing the UN Global Goals (SDGs)
at the grassroots level, and the overarching aim of the project will be met through; mobilizing and engaging our direct target groups (youth) by enabling them to create and take ownership of localizing the SDGs through grassroots activities; facilitating the building of synergies, good practices and success stories about localizing the SDGs through a collaborative platform; and lobbying and advocating for more supportive policy frameworks that will ensure longer term
the entrenchment of the various SDGs targets at grassroots levels.
Through all activities as told above, Open Space has provided young people with opportunities to engage directly with policymakers and influence youth-focused policies and programs. All activities ranging from debates and dialogues to trainings and mentorship, in all kinds of different spaces, have all been instrumental in building up critical thinkers, leaders, communicators, researchers, negotiators, and people with strong oratory skills to enable these said young people to engage with issues that matter to them. Many of these young people have gone on to be successful activists, youth leaders, and social entrepreneurs.