Youth at the Coast can make good leaders but lack mentorship, the Youth Affairs ministry has said.
Coast region youth affairs coordinator Charles Ayako on Tuesday said youth in the region exhibit great potential in leadership but there is an information gap that is holding them back.
“If young people understand leadership in their various sectors, they would be able to grow to become great leaders,” Ayako said.
Speaking during a leadership mentorship session for Mombasa youth at Tononoka Hall in Mvita organised by Search for Common Ground, Ayako said drug abuse, radicalisation, juvenile gangs, school dropout and unemployment are among challenges that bar youth from achieving their leadership potential.
To address these, Ayako said youth need to be equipped with leadership skills hence the government’s five-year National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement programme.
The programme, which will be conducted in all counties and piloted in Mombasa, will apart from leadership training, also see youth get grants to start-up or expand their businesses.
Search for Common Ground’s Wahida Mohamed said many youth aspire to be leaders but do not know where to start or how to go about it.
“There is a gap in their aspiration and the actual leadership. It is this gap that we want to bridge. They need to attend more engagement meetings and interact more with those who can mentor them,” Mohamed said.
She said most youth do not realise they are a key cog in any society and that is why they remain aloof when it comes to matters governance and leadership.
“Once they know their role and how they can engage, we believe we will have a better Kenya with better leadership than we currently have,” Mohamed said.
In their engagement with youth, Mohamed said most have fear when it comes to expressing themselves at first but that fear dissipates the more and longer they speak. It therefore shows that youth have the bravery and courage to speak in public but lack that initial push.
“They have the ability but lack that mentorship, that is why we brought mentors from SwahiliPot Hub to mentor them to be better public speakers,” she said.
Abdallah Nassor, 21, said youth leadership only becomes a challenge when young people are not mentored.
“Many of us do not understand what leadership is and what it entails. We tend to think leadership comes only at certain ages, which is not true,” Nassor said.
Nassor said after the mentorship and training from Search for Common Ground, he now has a different picture of what leadership is.
“I now understand better what a leader is and how to become one or how to behave when in a leadership position,” he said.
SwahiliPot Hub director Mahmoud Noor said for Kenya to have good leadership effort must be focused on the youth at the bottom of the pyramid.
“We cannot expect
to have good leadership from people who have not been mentored on
leadership. They say mould the clay
while it is still wet,” Noor said.
