Our Strategic Areas

1. Health and Well-Being

We believe in improved access to quality and responsive RMNCAH and SRHR services and information among young people especially those marginalized and vulnerable adolescents and youth in Kenya. We believe that when young people are empowered and supported, they make informed decisions and have healthy relationships devoid of risky behaviors and partner violence. Our programming are anchored on rights based approaches to enhance quality and total access to RAMNCAH and SRHR services by young people in their communities and where they feel comfortable. We believe that when the capacity of youth-led and serving organizations are strengthened, adolescents and youth uptake of services and information will be enhanced and their voices inform planning and programming. We believe that meaningfully adolescents and youth engagement in policy, advocacy, and service and information delivery and demand creation, in partnership with stakeholders and adult partnership, is key to reducing the negative indicators. The young people through their organizations/agencies and networks understand and appreciate the unique yet extremely diverse health seeking behaviours of this demography. Their efforts can help reduce access barriers and sexually education and health literacy gaps that promote early and risky sexual encounters, unmet contraception demands (as per FP2020 data), unsafe abortion, HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, early marriage and early child bearing.

2. Socio-economic Empowerment

Unemployment, lack of gainful employment opportunities, poor social services, drug abuse and depression are key challenges affecting Kenyan youth who make up over 70% of the population. About 800,000 of youth enter the labour market annually, yet about 35% are absorbed in comparison to 10% national unemployment rate. To address this situation, the government has developed a raft of measures in line with Big 4,and National Youth Policy, Kazi Mtaani, Kenya Youth Employment Project, Youth Enterprise Development Fund, National Gender and Affirmative Action Funds, and Ajira Digital Project among others. However, the level of unemployment is still rising leading to negative socio- economic impacts such as insecurity, exploitation and Gender Based Violence. These high unemployment rates result from several factors as; inadequate work readiness and employability skills due to non-market responsive education, skill-jobs mismatch, little to no opportunities, poor labour market information system and linkages, corruption and less comprehensive policies and strategies. While most policies are pushing youth to self-employment, majority prefer wage employment. These issues are exacerbated by little experience and fewer on-job training opportunities given that impede effective education-work transition. Further, Kenya lacks a national Youth Work Framework Delivery aimed at enhancing personal development and support the social, political and economic empowerment of youth beyond the formal learning in a more predictable, professional and sustainable manner. Consequently, most of the youth development and volunteer programs run by state and non-state actors are largely reactive, one-off and not evidence based. Due to socio-cultural challenges and weak support systems, female youth suffer more since they’re not well suited for few available non-skilled menial jobs in construction and public works. Agriculture and agribusiness have huge potential. However, there has always been little interest and uptake of agriculture and agribusiness opportunities by young women and men in Kenya, despite the immense potential for poverty reduction in rural areas, who are largely driven by real and perceived notions about differential decent self and wage employment. According to The Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy 2017 - 2021, less than 10% of the youth labour force is directly engaged in agriculture, with average age of a Kenyan farmer being 60 years. Further, IFAD’s Rural Youth Action Plan (RYAP) shows that 1.2 billion young people – equivalent to 88 per cent – live in rural areas of developing countries, and 75 million’. The scenario justifies the rural setting for the project.

3. Environment and Climate Change

Climate Change is disrupting national economies and affecting lives, costing people, communities and countries dearly today and even more tomorrow. Youth involvement in climate change mitigation is very low in Kenya, yet climate change is affecting all sectors of the economy hence challenging their future, Vision 2030 and achievement of the SDGs. much has to be done by the youth to minimize all these. Involvement and investment in clean and renewable energy offers one of the best bets for youth to support the mitigation processes. However, the limitations of target, time and technical know-how inhibit their meaningful engagement. Secondly, we believe that youth involvement and participation in climate change adaptation can promote empowerment and support conversation efforts. Our main climate change adaptation strategy is through agriculture and agribusiness. According to Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture, the sector is very key to national development and job creation by contributing 25% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) directly and 27% indirectly. Over 40% of the total population, and 70% of the rural people are employed in the sector in Kenya. The youth must be at the forefront in combating climate change since they are naturally custodians of future interests and will suffer more from the consequences of the changes. This opens the whole space for the youth. As such, the mandate of future sustainable development through the SDGs has been handed by the UN to the youth. The youth are still left out in the climate change agenda. Equity however demands sharing of benefits and losses including those of climate change; losses currently being transferred to the future generation. They can widen the scope of youth agenda to go beyond tokenism. The youths are therefore urged to get more active in environmental activities. They are encouraged to take up advocacy; - stand with communities and stakeholders who have interest.

4. Partnerships and Collaborations, Leadership and Adaptation

We aspire to support meaningful participation of young people (female and male) in the overnance , democratic and peace , electoral processes. The Election Guidelines Framework empowered both female and male youth to participate in the election process as aspirants and candidates within the election guidelines framework. Civic and voter education was conducted to urgue citizens to take part in election process by registering as voters and encouraging them to come out in large numbers to choose their preferred candidates.