YOUTH EMPOWERMENT KEY TO SOLVING KENYAN CHALLENGES.
Kenya is a key country in the East African community. The Kenyan population provides a very extensive market for many products both produced within the region and outside the region. Kenyan youth for unknown reasons have become a mockery to be used by most Kenyan politicians to maim and taint their lovely country. For some reasons, I am compelled to believe that we are much comfortable bringing down things that have taken time to build in minutes. The idea that some of this things are usually for our good seems to far from our conscience. Ethnicity and tribalism is a key challenge in the country arising from what we usually like calling political injustices in yester years. I am obliged to believe that our love for dwelling in the past is like the swine that is taken from mud and washed, instead of looking at the present, the swine goes to its mud business believing its past is what it will live all its life. Truth be told that the past is the past, we should have a vision and work earnestly towards achieving such.
Spiritual and moral training.
Most youth in these days have become “soft” threading from one party to another and planning on the next hang out. For matters pertaining to the soul out of which springs the matters of life, none of them is really willing to work upon them. The youth love to hear that God’s plan is good for them and that they will succeed if they go to church. Church becomes a ritualistic habit without renewal of character and conviction of wrong doing. So the first thing is train our youth on biblical and spiritual truths and expectation of them as a way of bringing renewal of character. Without a proper mind, inspired character and responsible actions as the first empowerment tools, the rest of the empowerments are in vain.
In Napoleon Hill’s book Success Through Positive Thinking, the writer stresses that most of the successful men and women in the American land became successful by putting God first and having their fellow men at heart. It became a culture that has become successful in the American soil. The likes of Martin Luther king knew that to start the anti-racial movements, they needed to influence the spiritual aspects of the populace in a way they will appreciate the love for fellow men. Today Barrack Obama is the president of USA. We thread well on the road of spiritual training for our youth, we solve the moral and tribal prejudices since the love for fellow men irrespective of tribes plus respect for all men alike will improve. Sexual based violence will improve greatly too.
mSMES.
Listening to most African countries, unemployment stands top in those areas that threaten most governments. Truth be told that even if you have never heard demonstrations over unemployment, it is a huge disaster in the region. The youth of course could be kept busy to following political news and fighting for the not so crucial matters, their idea is usually that whoever they are fighting for to be in power, will bring a new dawn to their joblessness situation. Ok, jobs are sought and created. We empower ourselves as the youth to imagine, we become empowered to create and build first class economies. Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises are a key component of most African economies that could one day wish to be at the top. Kenya knows this and is the reason why there are funds for youth: youth enterprise developments fund, Uwezo funds and the World Bank grants for spearheading such enterprises.
These are very good initiatives by the government to make sure that poverty levels are reduced. In the book The Magic of Thinking Big, the writer says “…it is a peculiar thing that no more effort is required to aim high, to demand prosperity and abundance, than is required to accept misery and poverty.” We have not been able to look at the logistics of creating wealth in all spheres; spiritual, in character and financially and realizing that it is very cheap as compared to the logistics of accepting poverty and misery. We should fight corruption and mismanagement of this funds and come up with an elaborate management and oversight system to make sure this funds are managed properly. Monopoly of such funds by a few groups of individual who are used by some key players to steal through the back door should be discouraged at all cost. If we will be faithful to exploit this channel exhaustively, most of the challenges we are facing as a country will be a nightmare of the past.
Engagements
An old adage says that an empty vessel makes the loudest noise. Let me stress this by saying that if we keep the youth idle and not engaged properly, demonstrations will be there, crime will be there, gender based violence will be there in large numbers. How do we keep the youth engaged? First we will do this through the support of talent based activities such as supporting those with athletic ambitions, those with football and art based ambitions too. We will do these things by providing avenues and facilities for supporting such activities.
Technology keeps changing daily but we keep the old skill training models for this generation and when most of them come out here, they are found irrelevant by their employers. Members of parliament, governors and even senators could brag of having helped the youth if they could invest in the new technologies out there and training the youth in them hence providing not only avenues to keep the youth engaged but also spearheading the development agenda. Automatic machines repairing and fabrication should be invested heavily in Kenya and you see how many youth will get jobs. A certain company recently hinted on their plan to start an aeroplane manufacturing plant in Kenya, when it becomes successful I am convinced we will wake up from our slumber that we are equal to tasks.
It is not late and will never be late unless we decide so, these things and cultures can be encouraged and when the morrow opens, we will all be glad to having believed in the dream. Imagination, as Einstein stated, is more important than knowledge. For knowledge will take you from point A to point B but imagination will take you everywhere. Keep imagining and never stop believing in your imagination Kenyan youth. Cheers
