Improving Opportunities for Youth in Slums
Empowering youth with lessons of peace and entrepreneurship.
|
| The Youth for Peace community cultural day celebration in the Eastlands.
|
| |
The post-election clashes in January 2008 empowered the country's gangs of unemployed youth. This highlighted the problem of youth raised in slums who are frequently lured into gangs in the absence of prospects of upward mobility, as described by the final report of the Commission of Inquiry on Post-Election Violence in Kenya.
The National Dialogue and Reconciliation Committee recommended tackling unemployment, especially among youth, as one of the long term solutions to the crisis in Kenya.
The Eastleigh Community Center, supported by USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI), trained and empowered 152 youth in Eastlands between the ages of 15 to 25 years. This effort was part of the Yes Youth Can! program to support youth-led recovery and development in areas that experienced post-election violence, or are at risk of violent conflict in the future. (See http://kenya.usaid.gov/programs/education-and-youth/47).
In the Nairobi slum areas, USAID/OTI worked with youth groups and community youth leaders to promote entrepreneurship and peace-building skills. After identifying training priorities, youth were placed in community training sites to learn computer literacy skills, hairdressing, dressmaking, auto wiring, and baking.
Once the skills-training was completed, youths wrote personal business plans identifying opportunities to generate income. Based on these business plans, ten youths received seed funding from a microfinance institution to start small businesses. Boniface Ngure, a beneficiary of US$250, said he will buy a tailoring machine and make dresses to sell.
In Mathare North, the Youth for Peace group used new peace-building skills to organize a community cultural day on November 6, 2010 to create awareness within their community of non-violence, good governance, democracy, and human rights. The youth applauded the cultural event, which one of them described as "...the first step towards having a platform for the Eastlands youths to make their voices heard..."
Speaking at the graduation ceremony marking the end of the training, USAID/Kenya Mission Director Erna Kerst commended the Eastleigh Community Center for targeting vulnerable youths to fight poverty, and congratulated the graduates for heeding the call for self-advancement, community service, and entrepreneurship.
For further information, please contact:
Megan German, Program Manager - Kenya, 202-712-1997, mgerman@usaid.gov.
|
