The Youth Café Featured On NGOSIFY And AllAfrica.com

The Youth Café works towards youth empowerment in Africa and believe that the upcoming youngsters are an essential asset worth investing in. The Youth Café was featured on Forbes Magazine last year and this year we have been featured on two more websites-NGOSIFY and AllAfrica.com

AllAfrica: In an article titled ’Kenyan Youth and the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) - Déjà Vu All Over Again’ AllAfrica discusses about how the high court judges blocked the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which represented an extension of the political truce reached between Kenyatta and Odinga, it was framed as the panacea for "peace, security and unity". The article highlighted that the exclusion of Kenyan youth from important consultations like this in national politics was not new and took example of a few NGOs that almost immediately offered their own critical appraisals of the BBI process and document, one of them being The Youth Café.

NGOSIFY: NGOSIFY’s article starts by pointing out how big the impact of organizations like The Youth Café are in Africa and how they help in the development of the country as a whole. They listed the top 10 NGOs in Kenya and encourage readers to join the organizations as a volunteer or donor. The Youth Café was listed as the 4th best NGO in Kenya and the 2nd best in the capital city of Nairobi, and appreciates the commitment we’ve made towards youth empowerment since our inception in 2012 and the long-standing cooperation with global partners such as UNESCO and UN-Habitat.

The Youth Café is featured on both these articles for the projects we work in under our eight priority areas featured in our Theory of Change, in this case, mainly ‘Governance and Political inclusion-Accountability & Remittances’ and  ‘Business, job Creation and Entrepreneurship.’ , as well as the ways in which we empower the youths in Africa. This Theory of Change is based on organizational performance improvement as an approach to build the capacity of The Youth Café which focuses on achieving our strategies. We recognize that high performing youth-led and youth-serving organizations need to be exceptional in four domains identified by our Performance Improvement framework: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Relevancy, and Self-Reliance.

Problems afflicting young people in Africa today are easier to recognize. Typically, they are pressing, cannot be ignored and the dream of eradicating them fuels the energy and passion within The Youth Café to make a difference. In the words of Henry Wadsworth, “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set with no destination.” In other words, without a Theory of Change, The Youth Café is vulnerable to wandering aimlessly. Now, The Youth Café and its partners have too much at stake to be aimless, amorphous, or random in their actions. This Theory of Change is a practical and essential part of a successful transformation effort we strive for and strategies to use.

As the first article linked above suggests, political inclusion of the youth is important, needed and must be prioritized now more than ever since upcoming generations have proved to be smarter- with respect to both technology and life skills, and also innovative and comprehensive. Principle 1 and 2 of our Theory of Change is to ‘Build a more relevant, sustainable, and effective enabling environment for education and work systems for young people, that recognize their rights and will’ and ‘Involve young people at all levels in decision-making processes that will affect their lives’ respectively.

Empowering our youth helps to not only build a more unified future, where each individual recognizes the importance of one another, a society that is both empathetic and sympathetic, but also a future that is more resilient, gender inclusive, collaborative and most importantly, peaceful. We need to work towards increasing the generation of domestic resources and eradication of high levels of poverty through advocating for changes in the legal and regulatory framework to ensure that the young people and especially the ‘undocumented’, ‘unbanked’ and poor are not further disenfranchised.

Furthermore, we should strive to develop accountability initiatives and increase advocacy for political stability and good governance to ensure there is a transparent, democratic, and accountable environment while enhancing further collaboration among stakeholders(local, international, private sector, and civil societies). These are two of the most influential and essential priorities all countries should give, which at The Youth Café, we recognize and promote.

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.

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