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‘Y en a Marre’ senegalese movement

Movements

yenamarre2Following is a translation of several of the concepts that we find more relevant regarding the movement Y en a Marre, the text is directly taken from their website

History

On the night from 15 to 16 January 2011, in a room at the Villa nª 07 in the neighborhood Parcelles Assainies in Dakar, a group of young people decided to finish with fatalism: two commited artists(Thiat and Kilifeu from the group Keurgui de Kaolack), two journalists (Fadel Barro and Aliou Sané), a student (Elh Hadj Abdoulaye Niasse), a bank executive (Marie Ndella Guèye), an IT engineer (Denise Sow) and  Amath SECK.

Around a glass of tea, came out the idea of creating a social movement called “Y en a Marre”, after many hours of intense debates about the situation in the country. A crisis situation (high cost of living, electricity cuts, financial scandals,etc) in a dangerous political context: The governance system installed and maintained at the head of the State, based on nepotism, political clientelism, corruption and impunity had undermined the founding principles of the Republic, perverted the moral and social values and divided the senegalese nation.

To this new iniciative joined, very quickly, other figures of the Hip-Hop movement like Malal Talla alias “Fou Malade”, Simon Kouka, Djily Bagdad. On January 18th 2011 the framework that now groups all the fringes of Senegalese youth was launched. With time, Y en a Marre has become very popular and has members along all the country and in the diaspora.

At a nationa level, Y en a Marre it’s composed by a wide network of “Esprits” who act as cells which represent the different localities in Senegal. This groups are created mainly by young people in each locality, who are promoting dynamic participation at a local level.

Since the beginning, citizens identified as Y en a Marre mobilise around the whole country and in the diaspora to create local cells or “Esprits”, to care specially of the specific problems in their own localities. The founding members have played a special role in creating this dynamic to make sure that all those who want to become part of Y en a Marre, find the way to do so in their own places.

Y en a Marre Esprits have the following decalogue:

  1. Every local node of the movement Y en a Marre is called “Esprit Y en a Marre”. A “Esprit” is an inclusive, laic and non-violent organization.
  2. The Y en a Marre Esprit is apolitical and is equidistant to all political parties. The coordinator, spokesperson and people in the office, cannot be part of any political party.
  3. Members of a Esprit are volunteers and pledge themselves to respond to the core of the organization to guarantee the democratic gains, safegard the Republic and promote the NTS (new type of Senegalese)
  4. Y en a Marre Esprit can be constituted based on geography, topics or profession
  5. Y en a Marre Esprit has at least 25 people with a minimum of 10 women
  6. Y en a Marre Esprit is composed by a coordinator, a reponsible of demands, an art director, an administrativ secretary, a spokesperson and of any other commision created based on the local needs.
  7. Y en a Marre Esprit does the diagnosis of the local problems, proposes solutions in the purest style of the Nts (New type of Senegalese) advocated by the Movement.
  8. Y en a Marre Esprit carry out their action plan after being supported by the core group who assures the sharing of good actions.
  9. Y en a Marre Esprit cannot acept any financial support from political parties.Under no circumstances they cannot take advantage from the support of any organization
  10. Y en a marre esprit obteain their profits from their socio-educative activities and from the selling of T-shirts and other gadgets

Visions

  • Develop a new type of Senegalese (NTS). A citizen, that through the demands he/she addresses to the State, political actors and the whole of the social actors, should carry out the social transformation project with the goal of achieving a society which is fair, equal,  rightful, peaceful and progressive for everybody.
  • Bring the political elite to realise the worries and concerns of citizens and develop a rule for Good Governancce for public affairs.

Strategical goal for change

  • Create a mechanism and observations tools to reinforce citizen control

  • Develop an activity programm for Citizenship Training in the schools

  • Contribute to make Urban Cultures serve to Citizenship education

  • Increase the engagement of young people in the management of the environment and their living environment.