The Youth Café Is Supporting The 2021 Nairobi City County Youth Policy.
“We must break the vicious cycle of corruption and increase the power of the people to keep check on the people in power.”
Over 75% of the population in Kenya comprises of the youth, but despite this numerical strength, young Kenyans remain on the sidelines of the country’s political, economic, and civic affairs. With a country crippled with corruption, unresponsive leadership and weak institutions, the youths’ effort to participate in matters that affect their lives are futile. One of the fundamental objects that the 2010 constitution enumerated about devolution is that every level of the government should give powers of self-governance to the people and enhance their participation and decision making on matters that affect their lives. National and County governments are therefore obliged to create programs through a participatory process.
The potential of youth has remained untapped for many years, it is high time that their contributions are seen as assets that can bring about development of the nation. In order for the country to benefit and grow from the efforts of young people, governments must create opportunities for the youth to be included in major phases of development. That is why the Youth Affairs Department of the Nairobi City Government is developing a County Youth Policy for Nairobi.
This policy will provide a framework for implementation of youth programs and projects in the county. It will provide youth leaders and their county leadership a platform to dialogue and develop the 2021 Nairobi County Youth Policy. Which will in turn inform county plans and budget that guides youth agendas and processes. The policy also aims to enhance the capacity of youth leaders in 17 constituencies, 85 wards to participate meaningfully in the devolution process.
The Youth Café has valuable experience in the development of different policies and programmes designed for the youth. In the year 2018, the organization was part of the Government of Kenya’s roll out of the Kenya Youth Development Policy, whose aim was to demonstrate the country’s commitment in spearheading multi- dimensional approaches and initiatives to address the challenges the youth are currently facing, while optimizing the several strengths and opportunities that the youth present.
In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Youth Café in partnership with GiveDirectly Inc., a global non-governmental organization, mobilized and implemented the Unconditional COVID-19 Cash Transfer Program. This program was created in order to contribute to enhanced economic empowerment within identified locations of Nairobi and to ultimately help eradicate poverty. The program focused on the disbursement of emergency grants (cash grants) by GiveDirectly to people mainly living in informal settlements in Kenya where The Youth Café currently works.
The Youth Café in collaboration with the Ford Foundation have partnered on a project that seeks to engage the youth in the fight against corruption and build their power to impact government policies and uphold their rights in the closing civic space.
In early 2021, The Youth Café in collaboration with the University of Sussex won the Global Challenges Fund for a project that is working to formulate a contextually appropriate psychosocial intervention model, aiming to improve youth’s mental health, promote social inclusion and strengthen post-pandemic resilience in Kenya. With the increase of mental health illness and inequalities in access to adequate health due to COVID-19, there was need for these challenges to be addressed. Through this program, we aim to create social and economic impacts among the youths through the advancement of mental health.
With its incorporation in Kenya and membership in Nairobi, The Youth Café is in full support of the Youth Policy that the Nairobi County is initiating as it is dedicated to championing and enabling young people in Nairobi to start assuming active leadership roles in their communities and constituencies. This can be seen through efforts that The Youth Café led in authoring the first Youth Manifesto non-partisan document developed through a collaboration between sixty-two organizations building on consultations with youth groups, alongside expert-led and youth moderated twitter chat sessions to frame the youth development agenda.
In addition, our organization is also taking part in an ongoing program, the Youth Excel implementation research project, ‘Advancing youth online civic reasoning in Kenya’ to equip young people with key media literacy skills: critical thinking, fact-checking, online safety, social media verification, and quality assessment of online information and their sources through a dedicated handbook.
In partnership with the Nairobi County Government, The Youth Café will be organizing Public Participatory Forums targeting the youth in Nairobi in order to integrate their voices and proposals into the Nairobi City County Youth Policy. These forums will be achieved through different activities such as meetings with the County Government Youth Ministry officials or Governor and Policy Strategic Planning meetings to deliberate and prioritize the youth needs and proposals.
We believe that these forums will provide an opportunity for the youth who are the major beneficiaries, to give their input and enrich the draft the Youth Policy. The Youth Café is also dedicated to support The Nairobi County Government in the dissemination and distribution of the policy after its completion.
The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience and transformative change.
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