Ken Wafula (NGO Council Chair) confirms that Rift Valley is leading in signature collections with nearly 300,000 collected so far. Overall we are looking at close to 800,000 as we send this out. The extension of the campaign to 31st March 2011 means that we will certainly get beyond the 1,000,000 by end of the campaign period. This does not include the 12,100 signatures online (www.petitiononline.com) and 9,100 on SMS (you can check SMS signatures online on http://smsvoices.com/change).
We are now concentrating on building the SMS platform signatures, where one can sign up by sending
ICC YES Firstname Surname IDNo County to 0716 666333
Key Needs:
The biggest challenge we are now trying to unravel is the logistics of bringing all the physical signatures together. An ideal system is to scan the signed forms & send them to signonemillion@gmail.com.
However, not everyone can do this, so we need volunteers being individuals/organizations with the capacity to receive and/or collect signed forms in certain areas. Please let us know who you are, send us your contacts, and where you have this capacity. Please let us have this information as soon as possible, so that we can map out all the people who can receive/collect signed forms, and start spreading the word out. We will also need assistance to ensure word gets out on the respective drop-off points, as well as on how to then get all these signatures to Nairobi for authentication, copying/scanning, before we send them on to the President's Office, Prime Minister's Office, Parliament, all Embassies, as well as shipping them out to the African Union (AU), the members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
One of the organizations we are discussing a regional collection network with is Green Belt Movement. GBM have a presence in 174 constituencies, but we also need to help them along as they mobilize this networks. (They have used their own resources to print signatures books, pay for permits for tents, and allocate vehicles to travel into estates. They have also sustained a team of volunteers who have been transversing across the city collecting signatures ...)
Lessons Learnt So Far:
We have all learnt several lessons ...
1. 'We Can Do It!' Obama used this phrase as his campaign but I personally did not understand how powerful those 4 words are ... until now! As I have watched a small idea grow into a powerful campaign against impunity, and saw the reaction to the campaign being copying of our our campaign (!) ... I felt it ... we can do it! ... beyond how flattering it feels, we are setting the agenda for a change, & it feels good!
2. 'It does not take much to get it done' ... this campaign started as a discussion between me and a certain lady who also really loves this country. She asked whether it was possible to collect 1 Million signatures in support of the ICC process ... I sent the message out, & voila! ... & all that most of us have had to do is sign up on an online site, or send an sms, or update a status on FB, or send a tweet, or circulate an email, or share out a form ... as we did other things .... & look at what we have achieved! ... less than 60 days later we have close to 1 Million .... & we have had some amazing moments.
3. 'The power of an Idea' ... we know there are a lot of people there who believe Kenyans cannot unite across tribes, religions, political parties, etc ... well, you only need to look at the sms platform, or the online signatures. There has also been an issue of who will unite Kenyans .... the lesson learnt from this is that we do not need a person, we just need the right idea ... and we can lick anything/anyone ... so politicians be warned, we can unite against you, without you!
4. 'The power of Radio/Media' ... a special mention for Kiss FM ... Caroline Mutoko, Larry Asego & Jalango owned the online petition campaign, & without getting a single penny for it talked it up so much that we are sure over 60% of the signatures on that site are because of their deep conviction ... Radio Africa, Nation Media, Royal Media, the Standard Group, etc have all stuck to an editorial policy that complimented our campaign, as have a lot of the community radio stations ... this has proven that media is Kenyan, and reflect the voice of the people .... they can step up when they encounter the right idea, and they can speak out as Kenyans, for Kenyans ... reminds me of the day of the universal headline ... kudos guys
5. 'Kenya has changed, positively' ... without a doubt we have moved on ... who ever thought to see the day when a campaign against a government (1/2) would succeed without politicians being involved ... now we are living under our own homegrown constitution for real ... sovereignty belongs to Kenyans, and we are exercising it directly when our elected representatives fail us (before we change them!)
Ngunjiri Wambugu, Executive Director,
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Change Associates Trust, P O Box 55589-00200
Nairobi, Kenya
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