Another day another meeting or conversation on youth empowerment. If you consider yourself a youth; classified by the United Nations as persons between the ages of 15–24 years or in Kenya persons who are between 15–35 years — can you count the number of times you have been invited to a youth convening or youth empowerment meeting or conference or online conversation?
If you can, did you leave the meeting feeling empowered; and did you feel that your input was needed? Or did you feel like an afterthought or attacked with the usual stereotypes of being lazy, apathetic, entitled, non-thinkers, irrational, inconsistent etc?
I have participated in several of these meetings, even going the extra mile of convening a meeting closely related to the topic. In most of the meetings, I felt disconnected from the meetings, as if my presence there was just a formality. I did not leave the meetings with the power that was to be bestowed on me as a young person.
This takes me back to when I was working as a programme intern at a non-profit; my colleague and I were tasked with conceptualising and implementing a dialogue series across universities in specific parts of Kenya. The purpose of the dialogue series was to get the youth to be involved in seeking accountability for public funds.
The event was a success in terms of numbers and engagement, but we failed to anchor the series into the university clubs that we had partnered with — and after we were done the dialogue series did not continue. One of the reasons behind the lack of continuity in the dialogue series was the lack of organic engagement with the students. We had partnered with the university clubs but we developed the topic and sold it to them as opposed to them selling us the topic.
I feel that the lack of organic engagement with the youth is one of the reasons forums and discussions on youth empowerment are usually disconnected. The conveners are more transactional in their engagements — because they already have a set way of how they want the meetings/discussions to run.
This is the same story when youth groups are called in to assist in policy formulation — they are not taken seriously and are often there to listen, talk and fill quotas. The engagements are also a one-size-fits-all affair — but we are not all the same.
Youth possess a great amount of brilliance, energy, and talent which is needed to advance society. Therefore, leaders, policymakers and non-profits need to fully understand what the word empowerment means in theory and action and give the youth the power to drive their agendas of change.
