Why we believe lived experience should shape decisions
Why we believe lived experience should shape decisions
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Lots of programmes struggle because the people closest to the problem rarely shape the decisions intended to solve it. In this conversation with Wasafiri’s Inclusion Lead Aisha Adan, we explore why meaningful inclusion matters for systems change.
Across our development and systems change work, participation is often treated as evidence of inclusion. Communities are consulted, workshops are held, and feedback is gathered. Yet, as Aisha Adan explains, being present in a room does not necessarily mean having influence over the decisions being made.
For Aisha, one of the biggest reasons programmes struggle to create lasting change is that they are often designed far from the realities they aim to address. Decisions are shaped by technical expertise, institutional incentives and donor timelines, while the lived experiences of those most affected remain peripheral to strategy and action.
“In complex systems, what really matters is power,” Aisha reflects. “And the people most affected by these problems are often the least influential over programme design, resource allocation and decision-making processes.”
Why isn’t participation enough?
Aisha believes that many institutions still misunderstand what meaningful inclusion requires. For Wasafiri, strengthening inclusion in systems change means creating the conditions for historically excluded groups to genuinely shape priorities, decisions and resources.
“It’s not about how many people are invited into a meeting,” Aisha explains. “It’s about whether those people can meaningfully influence what happens next.”
This requires recognising that different groups experience systems differently and operate within unequal power structures. It also requires treating lived experience as a legitimate and valuable form of evidence alongside technical expertise and data.
From a systems perspective, no single actor holds a complete picture. Better strategies emerge when diverse perspectives help reveal the political realities, relationships and practical conditions shaping how systems actually function.
What the communities in northern and coastal Kenya showed us
Drawing on Wasafiri’s work through the Nawiri programme in northern Kenya and later experiences connected to the CREATE initiative on the coast of Kenya, Aisha reflected on how exclusion shapes programme decisions and outcomes.
The work revealed that exclusion was political, geographic, generational and gendered. Yet women, young people and pastoralist communities who held deep insight into the drivers of vulnerability and conflict remained excluded from key decision-making spaces.
Through community-led research and dialogue processes, Wasafiri also saw how lived experience frequently challenged institutional assumptions.
Communities highlighted how insecurity, mobility and weak trust in institutions shaped the choices they made and influenced how they navigated everyday realities. These perspectives often exposed dimensions of the system that external actors had poorly understood.
For Aisha, the experience reinforced a critical lesson: even well-intentioned programmes risk reinforcing the very dynamics they hope to change when they fail to understand how power operates within a system, whose knowledge counts, and who gets excluded from shaping solutions.
How Wasafiri works in practice
In practice, Wasafiri supports partners to design processes that bring diverse actors into shared learning and decision-making spaces, particularly those often excluded from formal strategy discussions.
This includes participatory research, systems mapping, community dialogue processes, co-design workshops and learning structures that connect lived experience directly to leadership and governance conversations.
Importantly, Wasafiri does not treat inclusion as a standalone activity. It is embedded into how we develop strategies and gather evidence, too.
Across our work in food systems, peacebuilding and climate, we help organisations spend more time listening to the people closest to the problem and finding practical ways to include them in decisions and action.
Why good ideas still fail
According to Aisha, one of the greatest risks organisations face is designing programmes that appear strong on paper but fail in practice because they are disconnected from how systems actually function.
When these realities are ignored, programmes can unintentionally deepen mistrust or create solutions that communities neither own nor care to sustain.
Aisha also notes that organisations frequently miss critical intelligence when lived experience is excluded from decision-making. People closest to the problem often understand emerging tensions, unintended consequences and windows of opportunity long before institutions do.
Ignoring these perspectives weakens adaptability over time.
What changes when people shape the decisions that affect them
Rather than designing solutions for communities, organisations could begin shaping solutions with them. According to Aisha, this shift creates more resilient partnerships over time. It also improves the quality of decision-making itself because strategies become rooted in a deeper understanding of how systems actually behave, rather than how institutions assume they should behave.
For Wasafiri, this is ultimately what strengthening inclusion for systems change is about: helping people work together, learn as they go, and keep adapting in ways that can create lasting change.
Work like this shows how bringing lived experience and power dynamics into the heart of decision-making can strengthen the effectiveness of complex initiatives. If you are working to ensure programmes are shaped by the realities of those they aim to serve, Wasafiri would love to be part of the conversation. Please reach out to Aisha Adan.
