Excerpt One From A Recent Interview With University College London | State Of Social Enterprises Ecosystems In Kenya

Earlier this year, The Youth Café was interviewed by Eliana Summer-Galai, a Masters student with the Institute of Global Prosperity at University College London (UCL). This interview was to provide insight into her research on the Kenyan Social Enterprise Ecosystem. The research explores the actors across the ecosystem, looking at stakeholders from four stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle (entrepreneurial education, idea generation, funding, and growth), and the opportunities and challenges for local social entrepreneurs.

The questions asked and our responses form a series of 8 blog posts dissecting important issues with regard to the Social Enterprise Ecosystem in Kenya. This is the first post of the series on more about The Youth Café.

The Youth Café is a not-for-profit pan-African youth-led and youth-serving organization with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and a Theory of Change which is its Pathway For Action, Sustainability, Results, Learning, and Adaptation. Since its founding in 2012, The Youth Café has been working with young men and women in Kenya and around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change. To date, we have reached 1.6 million young men and women with our projects and attracted major partners such as USAID, Ford Foundation, Google, International Challenge Fund, to mention a few. Our latest Annual impact Report is a testament to this.

While active on a number of cross-cutting issues, The Youth Café works mainly in eight priority areas to which it brings a multidisciplinary and multi-perspective approach: Peace and Security, Including Preventing Violent Extremism; Governance and Political Inclusion(Remittances and Accountability); Culture, Arts, and Sports; Education and Skills; Business, Job Creation and Entrepreneurship; Universal Health Coverage; and Environmental Preservation, and Climate Change. The Eight Pillars of The Youth Café provide an essential organizing structure for the development and implementation of its various programs and initiatives, which all play a critical role in reducing youth deprivation and socio-economic and political empowerment of young people in the continent.

Our work is underpinned by a set of principles including: To build a more relevant, sustainable, and an effective enabling environment for education and work systems for young people, that recognize their rights and will; Involve young people at all levels in decision-making processes that will affect their lives; Partner with young people to build a better, more resilient world for all generations; and frame youth programs on a gender-responsive Rights-Based Approach (RBA), implying that young people are considered as ‘rights-holders.

With a combined individual and organizational membership of 147,000 and a monthly digital reach of 400k, The Youth Café works with marginalized sections of youth such as youth living with disability, youth living in informal settlements, young women and girls, minority youth, indigenous youth among others. With our reach in all the 47 counties in Kenya and 22 countries in Africa, we are able to reach and engage with the youth and marginalized populations in our different programming under our Eight thematic areas through the diverse and individual organizational partnerships that we have.

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.

Contact us for any comments or suggestions.