Advocacy for Children and Women in Kenya

For Peggy Namadi Saka, meaningful development begins when the most marginalized are empowered to speak and listened to. As Program Lead at the Kenya Alliance for Advancement of Children (KAACR), she has spent more than a decade working to ensure that children and young women are not just represented in policy conversations but also are actively shaping them.

Tree Planting

In 2017, Peggy was awarded the Katherine Fleming International Development Award, administered by Coady Institute, for her longstanding commitment to grassroots advocacy and citizen-led change. Through the award she was able to attend Coady’s Diploma in Development Leadership program. Later Peggy also completed courses in Advancing Women’s Leadership in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding for Community Development (2018), while continuing to deepen and scale her work across Kenya.

“The Katherine Fleming Award came at a time when we were rethinking our strategy, and it allowed me to reflect on our advocacy and movement-building approaches,” Peggy says. “It gave us the space to document, learn, and share more broadly.”

Outreach session with girls and young women

KAACR’s approach is participatory and systemic. The organization supports the development of child-led spaces, such as youth parliaments and community audits, where children can analyze county budgets and advocate for services that respond to their realities.

“Children analyze budgets in their own communities comparing what was allocated versus what was delivered,” Peggy says explaining how that kind of engagement shifts the power dynamic. They engage officials directly with their findings.”

Coady’s emphasis on citizen-led accountability and asset-based development has influenced how Peggy and her team design and evaluate programs. The training and mentorship provided through Coady’s courses offered new frameworks for deepening local participation, as well as a space for global exchange.

International Women’s Day

“The course gave me the opportunity to interact with others from different countries,” Peggy shares. “We learned together and critiqued the idea of development as it is presented from the global North.”

The Katherine Fleming Award also improved KAACR’s efforts to scale local advocacy strategies across six counties. Under Peggy’s leadership, KAACR has built alliances with girls’ leadership groups, trained community-based gender champions, and helped shape national policy, including Kenya’ s Children’s Act (2022), which strengthened legal protections for children and addressed issues such as online safety and digital inclusion.

Peggy noted how the institutional support from Coady and the award’s visibility helped increase KAACR’s legitimacy among partners and policymakers.

“We’ve had opportunities to share our work with wider audiences, including at international forums,” she says. “The award created new spaces for dialogue and collaboration.”

Planning for the advocacy meeting with women

Her current efforts also include documenting movement-building practices and supporting young people in creating their own media. By focusing on storytelling, data, and civic participation, Peggy hopes to inspire a new generation of changemakers who understand their rights and how to claim them.

“I am passionate about creating spaces where young people can speak for themselves and challenge systems that exclude them,” she says.

World Menstrual Day

The relationship between Coady and leaders like Peggy is one of mutual learning. While Coady provides training, accompaniment, and recognition, it is through practitioners like Peggy that those ideas come to life and multiply.

“Coady gave us tools and frameworks, but it’s the community voices that give the work meaning,” she reflects.

Peggy’s story is one of collaboration, conviction, and deep-rooted belief in the power of participation. With support from Coady Institute, she continues to advance a model of advocacy that is both locally grounded and globally connected, where data meets dignity, and where no voice is too small to be heard.

The Katherine Fleming International Development Award is presented annually to an African woman leader in memory of Katherine Fleming a 1985 graduate of St. Francis Xavier University (1985), who dedicated her life’s work to overcoming child poverty in Africa until her death in 1999.

Since 2000, Coady Institute has presented the prestigious award to 25 different recipients during StFX Homecoming celebrations. In 2025, to mark the 25th anniversary of the award, Coady Institute offered the first Katherine Fleming Women’s Leadership Course in partnership with Organization for Women in Self Employment (WISE) Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The award and course were made possible through the generosity of donors. Learn more and donate by going to Katherine Fleming International Development Award.