Management’s Meg Warren takes her study of allyship to Africa

Four women in tan vests stand outside a clinic. A sign reads "Child Welfare Clinic."

American researchers Meg Warren from WWU and Karen Torejsen from Claremont Graduate University visit CFK Africa’s maternity clinic for teens in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya with CFK Africa program officers Siama Yusuf and Mediatrix Tuju.

Associate Professor of Management Meg Warren is drawing from her decades of research in positive psychology and workplace allyship for her latest work devoted to improving the lives of teenage mothers in Nairobi, Kenya.

Warren recently returned from seven weeks in Nairobi working with CFK Africa, an NGO focused on empowering youth in the massive Kibera informal settlement, the largest slum in Africa. CFK Africa’s Funzo Project supports teen mothers with education assistance, job training, violence prevention, and psychosocial support.

“My role has been to observe the sorts of work that they’re already doing and help them develop their curriculum and take it to the next level to solidify their work,” Warren said. “The part of all this work that I’m particularly interested in is how they’re engaging boys and men as part of the solution.”

In addition to supporting women and girls, CFK Africa enlists men and boys as active partners in preventing gender violence and fostering the wellbeing of women and girls through education and community building.

They work with slum landlords to emphasize their roles as community leaders with a moral and legal obligation to prevent and report violence in their multi-family housing compounds. They also work with men who drive “boda boda” motorbike taxis and boys in youth programs for sports and the arts. CFK Africa builds peer mentoring groups for young men facing the tremendous cultural pressure to find enough economic success to support their whole families — and often find a pathway out of the slums.

Much like workplace allyship, these programs are rooted in positive psychology, Warren said, and focused on preventing violence before it happens.

“We really need to get to how we can start building their own ability to fend off negative, toxic pressures from the outside, and build their own inner resilience, to engage in positive behaviors,” she said.

A group discussion unfolds around a table laden with papers & water bottles. Attendees, diverse in age & attire, actively participate. Roses in a vase add a touch of color.

Warren, second from the right, along with researchers, landlords, city officials, teachers and school leaders, listen to girls share their stories about gender violence in schools during a workshop and discussion at CFK Africa’s headquarters in Kibera.

CFK Africa has been working with communities in Kibera for more than two decades. Most of the organization’s staff and leadership team is Kenyan, and they have developed a deep understanding of the culture and the community and know what kind of messages will best resonate locally.

“Together we can develop programming that increases their effectiveness,” Warren said.

Warren has studied positive psychology and allyship for more than a decade, focusing on allyship in the workplace and how men can most effectively support female coworkers. Her work has been published in Scientific American, the business school magazines at Harvard University and MIT, and most recently, Psychology Today.

For more than a decade, she has broadened her scope beyond the U.S. workplace and into international locations: Her international collaborations in Canada, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Fiji and Pacific Island countries and Democratic Republic of Congo resulted in 17 research publications.

In DRC, she was the lead researcher on an initiative that brought together men and women to collectively learn about violence prevention, positive masculinity and allyship during a time when former child soldiers were being reintegrated into civil society following years of brutally destructive war. But she was unable to travel to the DRC at the time and had never visited Africa until her trip to Kenya.

“One of the biggest things that has happened for my career was coming out here,” Warren said in a Zoom interview during her last week in Nairobi. “It’s just opened up my world.” She’s now considering new projects in Somalia and Ghana, as well as work with other groups in Kenya.

Two women, one older with gray hair, the other younger with dark hair, sit attentively in maroon polo shirts. The younger woman holds a folder. A third person's back is partially visible.

Warren and Torejsen listen to the launch of an innovative male allyship initiative for slum landlords at CFK Africa headquarters in Kibera. Torejsen and Warren previously worked together on research in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Workplaces, corporations, privileged spaces in the U.S. and in our Western world are an important context where allyship is relevant,” Warren said, “but it is just as important in the slums and in war-ravaged regions and extreme contexts.”

Her next big project is a book illustrating her body of research on allyship, with stories and examples from around the world. She’s about a third of the way through, she said, and she hopes to be done by the end of next year.

“The book is tentatively titled, ‘Let’s All Rise: Be the Ally You Wish You Had.’”