meetings Young people given opportunities to speak at meetings 2.8 speaking at public meetings is for men. Besides, young people are hardly given the chance to speak at such public meetings. 2 The averages above are low concerning voice and equality during public meetings. For women they don‘t believe they have equal chances to speak at meetings (2). For young people the chances are slimmer (2.8 male respondents) and even worse for young women (2). In the Chiundura the village heads were accused of discarding women‘s contributions at community meetings even though they are always in the majority in attendance. Figure 3. Have you ever contributed to a discussion 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 sometimes Often Rarely Male Never N/A Female For young people, even though they have limited participation in public dialogue meetings that are community focused, they participate in discussions at the foras they create and at other meeting places such as their homes, beer halls etc. For the men, their discussions are centred on the current state of the country and the hardships they are going through. Women are mostly involved in discussions to do with family matters. Conclusions Even though there is a lot of work taking place to empower citizens, the results will be seen in the long run. For this to happen there is need for meaningful changes in power relations to facilitate a two-way engagement process. The current set up in communities does not facilitate policy engagement and the consultative processes that take place are meaningless in as far as they influence the policy making processes. They are designed to create a patron19