Challenges Identified

In Senegal, youth’s experiences of inequality, protection gaps, and limited access to education are routinely documented through an adult-centric lens and framework. These experiences are filtered through external narratives that rarely reflect how youth understand and experience their own realities. Without mechanisms that allow youth to produce and present their own evidence, their voices remain absent from the policy-making and programming decisions that most directly affect their lives. Structural issues such as the absence of a minimum age of marriage in the Senegalese Family Code persist in part because the youth most affected have not had the tools or platforms to make their experience visible and to reach decision-makers.

Our Approach

Sunu Baat, meaning “Our Voice” in Wolof, is a participatory research and citizen engagement initiative developed by Bantare Impact Group, using the Photovoice methodology to allow youth to document their own reality without filters or external narratives shaping it. In 2025, a major edition was held in Guédiawaye, mobilising youth photographers and leaders aged 12–20.

The process was structured around four stages:

• Learning the fundamentals of the photography (composition, light, perspective) coupled with rigorous awareness on informed consent and respect for privacy.

• Field documentation showing how young people capture scenes of their daily lives that they consider important, without an imposed framework, acting as direct witnesses of their environment.

• An analysis of the photos taken to extract a clear message. Participants write personal narratives that contextualize each image and give it a political or social dimension.

• A space for exchange where images are projected and discussed in groups to encourage critical reflection and dialogue between peers.

The Sunu Baat process creates a safe environment where the image becomes a tool for collective reflection and advocacy. 

Impact

• Photographs serve as factual evidence to raise awareness among stakeholders and foster dialogue with decision-makers.

• Youth call, through their stories, for concrete reforms—such as the revision of the Senegalese Family Code to set the minimum age of marriage at 18 and the renewal of the Children's Parliament.

• The confidence of the participants and their ability to claim their fundamental rights is strengthened.

Outcomes

Sunu Baat demonstrated that photovoice is more than a creative exercise but rather a methodological mechanism for co-producing situated knowledge and strengthening youth participation in social change. When youth are given the tools to document and analyse their own realities, they produce insights that are both qualitatively richer and more politically credible than evidence collected about them.

The initiative also generates qualitative evidence that feeds directly into decision-making processes and public programming, positioning it as a replicable model for organizations seeking to ground their advocacy in the lived experience of the communities they work with. The longer-term ambition is to expand Sunu Baat’s reach and institutional influence, ensuring that the evidence youth produce is incorporated into legislative, programmatic, and budgetary processes.