The Youth Café has partnered with International Trade Centre to promote the 2021 Youth Ecopreneur Awards. Youth Ecopreneur Awards call for young ecopreneurs with innovative solutions in three categories: waste, water, and energy. Stand a chance to win a monetary prize total of USD 15,000 as well as technical assistance and coaching by ITC experts.

The Awards welcome applications from entrepreneurs up to 35 years old with a registered business in the least developed and developing economies. The Awards offer a stage and sounding board for youth to showcase their sustainable and scalable solutions to accelerate the green economic transition and receive support on this journey.

The Youth Café wants to know what you think!

Please take a few minutes to fill out our Youth Organizing Survey to let us know the Kenyan Youths perspectives on current issues. The result of this survey will help us in understanding current youth issues as we strive to promote & strengthen the role of young people as positive actors of change.

Scan the QR Code to take the survey!

We have devised a plan to help guide us as we strive to meaningfully impact society, this plan is called our Theory of Change. To give you a better understanding of this plan which is our Pathway for Action, Sustainability, Results, Learning, and Adaptation, we have developed a 2D animated video.

We hope it will inspire you as an African youth to work with us as a Donor (Funds, Books, Equipment) Member, Volunteer or Intern as we chart a way towards achieving a youth-led Africa!

The Youth Café has been invited to be a part of the panel for phase 3 of The 2063 Academy Youth Dialogue. This phase shall be a convener for the participants to be trained on technical skills (How to write a policy paper, policy design, monitoring and evaluation of the progress report), and produce a regional youth policy report on the Agenda 2063, as well as the establishment of the Youth Network.

We will be speaking during the NGOs presentation on 13th September at 10:20 am GMT+1 | 12:20 pm Nairobi time and the Inspiring Talk & Fireside Chat "Youth collaboration: The Youth Café in Kenya" on the 17th of September at 12PM GMT+1 | 2PM Nairobi time.

International Youth Day takes place annually on the 12th of August. This year’s theme is focused on “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”. Though, the success of this effort on a global scale can only be achieved through the participation of youth.

The Nairobi County have developed the draft of the Nairobi County Youth Policy using the valuable feedback we got from the Youth Engagement Forum held on July 23rd, 2021.

On 31st August, The Nairobi City County held a Stakeholders Consultative Meeting Program to discuss the Youth Policy formulation process. As a supporting partner, The Youth Café attended the consultation.

On August 3rd, we had a visit from representatives of our partner organisations International Republican Institute, Dhia Ben Ali who is the Project Manager for East Africa and Cosmas Tabuche, Program Manager at IRI. During the discussion we explored strategies to bring youth voice into the 2022 general elections by developing and contextualizing Youth County Manifestos to specific Counties in Kenya with consideration of the next 5 years.

The partnership is designed to build on The Youth Cafe's research and community engagement as well as International Republican Institute’s work around Leadership Academy Lab and will equip the next generation of young Kenyan politicians and civic activists with skills and knowledge in human-centered design approaches, deliberative democracy, community engagement, networking, policy development, and advocacy skills needed to influence in the forthcoming general elections.

On August 19th, we had a visit from Maryanne Ochola Head of Partnerships and Programmes at Shujaaz Inc., a youth focused strategic communications firm. During the discussion, we explored ways on how we will develop and promote youth-focused content highlighting the impact of young political and civic actors.

This will promote the inclusion of youth in leadership positions and tell the story of youth potential to a broad audience and create a more balanced media environment where young people are portrayed as active leaders in their communities.

On the 19th of August 2021, we had a wonderful visit from our friend Michael Touchton Professor of Political Science and Faculty Lead for Global Health at Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas at the University of Miami. We had lengthy discussions about how best we could work together to evaluate the impact of common participatory processes on individual willingness to invest in local public goods in Elgeyo Marakwet County Government.

Through this partnership, we hope to expand the kinds of work that we do surrounding Participatory Budgeting in Kenya.