The Youth Café is extremely humbled and honored to be chosen as one of the five finalists for this year's WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award. The WIN WIN Youth Award is an international award that aims to empower and reward young people who play an active role in the creation of a more sustainable future. It is one of the world’s leading sustainability awards and has for the last 21 years awarded individuals and organizations for its contribution to a sustainable world.
The theme of 2021 is anti-corruption, and The Youth Café was nominated as one of the top five finalists out of a pool of over 220 nominees from 52 countries around the world for our work under the thematic area of Governance and Political inclusion as highlighted in our Theory of Change.
Through our Theory of Change, the organization identifies Governance and Political Inclusion as one of our eight thematic areas. Under this thematic area, The Youth Café has implemented various award winning initiatives that emphasize accountability and transparency to uphold a strong democracy.
Our strategic goals under governance and political inclusion hopes to provide at least 100,000 young men and women with an enabling environment for active participation and meaningful engagement, and support the exercising of their civic rights and responsibilities in the society. It achieved this through the exercise of principles which recognize the partnership with young people as leaders and experts at all stages of policymaking, including the follow up and review of policy implementation to ensure accountability.
One of our projects in this area is titled “Engaging youths in the fight against corruption and the closing civic spaces in Kenya”. The Youth Café is redefining the role of youths in improving the democratic processes in Kenya. Through a photo/video competition, this project utilizes different digital media platforms to engage young people and amplify their voices regarding governance, thus generating ideas to address inefficiencies in. Governance initiatives. So far, the contest has reached over 500,000 young people and attracted hundreds of entries.
The media contest continues to prove that young people are heavily invested in socio-political development. Under this project, The Youth Café is also building the capacity of Kenyan youth in independent media journalism with a focus on accountability in public finance and participatory governance processes.
This motivated young people from different parts of Kenya to submit their realities and opinions on political corruption. The Youth Café has created this independent platform that reaches over 200,000 readers a month and publishes cutting edge evidence-based and youth researched articles, policy briefs and reports on political and governance issues.
The Youth Café believes that corruption stifles sustainable development by increasing incoming inequalities and curtailing equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. Since corruption can take many forms, it manifests in different sectors of an economy affecting individual domains such as public health, sports and entrepreneurship. It erodes public trust and is a threat to democracy and stability. As such, this project aims to create a sustainable community where young people could support each other to uphold integrity.
As one of the top 20 nominees, we have the opportunity to participate in the WIN WIN Sustainability Adventure 2021. This is a two day virtual event that will be held on the 2nd and 9th of October. This event will allow representatives from The Youth Café to connect with changemakers in a global community of youth active citizens, learn how to create sustainability solution stories, expand communication skills, learn from others’ ideas and perspectives, and gain visibility at the WIN WIN Youth Arena happening at the WIN WIN Award Ceremony.
The theme of this year's WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award resonates very strongly with The Youth Café’s credence that the work against corruption is a necessary condition for global sustainable development. This is why we are so honored by this recognition and hope to continue striving for a youth-led, sustainable, equitable and corruption free future.
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