The Value of Co-Creation

Co-creation is core to ZanaAfrica. In everything the organization does, they make sure end users are integrated into the process and their feedback is incorporated in a substantial way. That feedback is then used to adjust the products, educational material, and services. Although this means the work takes longer, it also means that what ZanaAfrica produces is sustainable, that it will actually be used, and that it will have the deep-rooted impact it was designed to have.

One example of this is Nia Teen, the magazine ZanaAfrica developed. It is approachable to a teenage audience in a way that most health material is not, because the language includes slang and familiar terms, which means that girls will actually read it and circulate it among their friends. Alongside the magazine ZanaAfrica developed a comic book that is fun to read and brings in humor. This came from asking girls what they would actually pick up, what questions they want answers to, and what type of material they want to see.

For my internship I have been working on the organization’s Theory of Change, the document that lays out how ZanaAfrica understands its own work: what we do, who it reaches, and what changes as a result. This has taken the better part of two months, which felt like a long time to spend on a single document, but it was important to get every word right. The Theory of Change was meant to be evergreen, something the organization could rely on for years, far beyond my time here. 

For the first month, I refined the content with leadership. When I presented the document to the team implementing the work there was alot of pushback. I had used terms that were populate in American English but phrasing that is not used in Kenya. The more serious problem was that many people could not see their work reflected in what I had developed. Because this is an organization that treats co-creation as non-negotiable, I took the feedback I received and started fresh. The standard ZanaAfrica holds their selves to with the girls who read Nia Teen applied just as much to me and to the colleagues whose work I was attempting to describe.

So we went back to it, and then went back again, and again, and again. What came out of that process is something people feel proud of. A colleague told me they will use the Theory of Change as a cheat sheet when meeting with government counterparts and other partners, because it gives them an easy way to articulate what ZanaAfrica does and the impact they have. That is a far better outcome than the version I would have handed in after two weeks. The document is useful to the people who have to use it because they are the ones who helped write it, and the two months it took to get there was the whole point, rather than the delay.