Improving active citizenship amongst the youth in Gweru using action research

Abstract

A lack of citizenship virtues among youth facilitates their participation in violent civic and political processes, as well as low participation in key democratic processes. Patriotism, respect, dialogue, unity, and tolerance are integral values of citizenship that facilitate citizens’ progressive participation in a democratic society. Some young people in Zimbabwe do not exhibit these virtues, as evidenced by their participation in electoral violence, and violent social service and human rights violations protests. The status quo shows little evidence of deliberate efforts made to inculcate peace-anchored citizenship virtues. This study adopted a qualitative research approach undergirded by a participatory action research design with the aim of improving citizenship virtues among selected youth in Gweru, Zimbabwe. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. Results reveal that that young people are not self-motivated to participate in violence, but there are contributing factors such as economic vulnerability and clientelism, frustrations from abuse of human rights, exclusion from decision-making processes, poor social service delivery, and coercion. It has also been flagged that there is low appreciation of peace-anchored citizenship virtues among the youth. It was therefore concluded that there is a need to blend inculcating citizenship virtues among the youth with promoting their economic empowerment. Hence, this research has designed a model on how to promote citizenship virtues among the youth through social entrepreneurship as action research.