Applying this tool as one of the participatory approaches that can easily extract information from participants engaged and how they can break into community spaces. I have introduced this tool to the youth and men’s forum to stimulate their consciousness and level of engagement with local government. The participants actively engaged in the process to a point that they have adapted the tool to analyse power spaces and how to penetrate them. First step was; the identification of the available powers and decision makers within the community. The participants were given a chance to brainstorm among themselves, and identify the powers and who had most power and access in their community. It was amazing as in how the whole exercise brought by different views that even the participants had never looked back to see. They had rather taken everything at surface level and little did they know that they had rights and access to hold their leaders accountable.

 Facilitating and engaging in the process giving participants the opportunity to do the writing and plotting of the matrix using locally available materials this was done in groups in order to pilot different dimensions thus enhancing their knowledge. This therefore armed them with ownership of the whole process.

The discussions and analysis of the results gave an insight to the participants and further opened up how much they had been left out in articulating their needs at local government level. The youth activists come up with an action plan to engage with the councilors with a completely different approach. They now knew where to begin and how they would present their issues and at what level.

Lesson learnt: The ambition that burns within the youth needs enhancement with more access to information and the approaches that need be applied. However this is solely identified by them.