User:Dabesaki

About
Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima was a youth development consultant at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, playing roles in the drafting processes of the African Youth Charter (AYC); leading the drafting of the plan of action to accelerate the ratification and implementation of the Charter; reviewing the African year of youth 2008 (in which a recommendation for the declaration of a decade on youth was put forward, which was adopted by African heads of state) and drafting the plan of action for the decade (adopted by African Youth Ministers).

He also led an 11 country initiative (involving Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cape Verde, Egypt, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Swaziland and Sierra Leone), aimed at supporting and strengthening countries’ ratification processes of the youth charter, particularly addressing constraints which impede successful adoption of the charter in parliament. In addition, he led the revitalisation processes of the Pan African Youth Union, leading the review of its statutory frameworks including its statutes and rules of procedure. He was also a consultant at the United Nations Population Fund, Commonwealth Youth Programme, Commonwealth of Learning and he is currently leading the writing of an anthology on the African Youth Charter commissioned by the Open Society Institute, New York office.

Dabesaki was nominated by Nigeria’s Federal government to the Commonwealth Regional Youth Caucus (RYC), the highest level of statutory youth participation in the Commonwealth system, and a platform for youth to engage as ambassadors of their government, the Commonwealth and young people in their respective countries. In this role, which he held from 2005 until 2010, he led the ‘New Nigeria Initiative’ focusing advocacy work on Nigeria’s National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, promoting transparent elections and supporting the government’s value re-orientation efforts. He won the Commonwealth RYC Innovative initiative award to further this work, with specific focus on youth in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Dabesaki has been an active player in local, regional and international processes. He was a youth HIV/AIDS and SRH educator working mainly with secondary school students in Nigeria’s Rivers State. He also worked as Executive Secretary, leading the design of programmes, at the Life Time Caring Ministries (LTCM, from 2002- 2003) – a charity which cared for vulnerable groups, particularly orphans and widows. He is adviser to various non-profits and co-founder of Development Partnership International, a model non-profit which promotes youth leadership in social change and development actions in Nigeria and Zambia.

Dabesaki’s research interest focuses on methodology for measuring youth well-being. His current PhD research is therefore focused on exploring novel methodology for developing measures of youth well-being which looks beyond psychometric validation processes. This is grounded in participatory research approaches and looks critically at how young people interpret trends emerging from quantitative analysis of their quality of life and how they make sense of their own achievements, and will provide a meaningful contribution to discourses around youth development indexes.

Workshops Organised
Dabesaki coordinated the youth for peace project in Sierra Leone on behalf of the Commonwealth Youth Programme and the Commonwealth of Learning. The project was aimed at promoting young people's active involvement in developing content for peace building initiatives in Sierra Leone and elsewhere via ODL media. It drew extensively on participatory approaches and relied on what was important to the youth themselves.

The project carried out in two phases: the on line consultative process, which used three platforms, an email list, facebook and a social media site called ning.com, in addition to a physical workshop held in Freetown in July 2009.

Links

 * Commonwealth Youth Programme on WikiEducator
 * CYP - Regional Centre for Africa (CYP-CRA)

Notes from Wikineighbours
Hi Dabesaki, wellcome to WikiEducator. I'm your WikiNeighbour. You might be interested to meet more wiki-colleagues. Please let me know if I can be of any help to you. Gladys Gahona (eL4C24 Junior Facilitator).--chela5808 17:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)