The Youth Café Is Part Of The IEBC Youth Coordinating Committee On Elections

World over, young people have little or no trust in public institutions and Kenya is no exception. With 75% of Kenya’s population being below the age of 35, securing the participation of this demographic will contribute majorly to inclusion in the country’s democratic processes and development agenda.

Conversely, the electoral management body has only managed to register 1.5 million young people out of a targeted 6 million. Further, the youthful population needs to be segmented into blocks to employ a focused approach in reaching them. As is evidenced above, young people present a unique disengaged political constituency thus, the need for a well-coordinated approach to achieving their participation.

The Youth Coordinating Committee for Elections having been launched with the obligation to enhance youth participation in the electoral process, it is imperative to enhance the capacity of this committee to be able to carry out its mandate as per the aspirations shared by the commission. The Y.C.C. draws its membership from youth focused and youth-serving organizations across the country and will use these existing structures to conduct voter education and mobilization of young people to register as voters ahead of the general elections in 2022.

One of the key action points from the stakeholder engagement held between the IEBC and various youth organizations was to conduct a capacity building session. The session was to train the members of the youth coordinating team for elections on how best to merge synergies and come up with actionable activities to enhance voter registration particularly among young people.

The session was weeklong and was held in Machakos. Some of the objectives of the session included: To build the capacity of the YCC members on the electoral process; To plan YCC activities to reach out to young people ahead of the 2022 general elections; To design youth friendly voter education programs and activities.

The sessions were attended by representatives from The Youth Café, Siasa Place, Youth Agenda, ELOG, Youth Alive, IRCK, UNSA, UCSPAK, Africa Youth Trust among others. The sessions were largely facilitated by the county elections managers from Machakos, Makueni and Nairobi counties. IFES and CMD Kenya also supported the sessions at different capacities. The National Youth Council was also present in the meeting represented by the CEO.

The workshop ended with the team coming up with an elaborate work plan to be implemented in the course of the next 9 months. The activities suggested were aimed to enhance youth voter registration and participation in the electoral process. The Youth Café will be leading in voter registration activation and particularly coordinating activities in the Nairobi region. We hope our commitment to ensure meaningful youth participation in the electoral cycle will ultimately be achieved.

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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