Communication Challenges Experienced in the Process of Advocating Against Child Trafficking in Kenyan Primary Schools

The Case of Mathare Constituency

Abstract

In Sub-Saharan Africa, child trafficking is one of the leading criminal activities after drug trafficking. In Kenya, many cases of child trafficking especially for the purpose of sexual exploitation and domestic servitude are reported each year thus the need to publicly advocate against it and implement relevant laws that will address it accordingly. Guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), which theorises that motivation and ability are the key tenets of persuasion communication that ultimately plays a huge role in addressing common communication challenges, this study sought to find out the communication challenges usually encountered by individuals and organisations while advocating against this vice amongst primary school children. This is after preliminary studies indicated that as much advocacy indeed plays a huge role in addressing child trafficking in Kenya, this success is not without its challenges. A purposive sample of 16 facilitators was selected as per Yamane’s formula and the convergent parallel mixed methods design was used for data analysis. The study established that 93.7% of the facilitator respondents agreed to the fact that they indeed face a number of challenges as they attempt to advocate against child trafficking in primary schools of Mathare constituency. Furthermore, 75% of these respondents identified time constraint as the main challenge they face followed by lack of support from the school administration at 62.5%. Thus, the study concluded that it is very possible to have an advocacy programme that will end up being effective but faced by a number of communication challenges at the same time. However, this does not imply that such an initiative should be frowned upon and undermined because how these challenges are mitigated is what eventually provides solutions that will help in filling in the identified gaps.