Tapping the Potential of Kenyan Youth Through Skills Empowerment

“As a result of her passion in the trade, our facility has seen a 70 percent overall increase in enrollment and an 80 percent rise of potential female students seeking to pursue mechanics course,” said David Masinde, Rose’s mentor and mechanics instructor.

Women like Rose have completed similar trainings in other trades and taken roles traditionally associated with men. Catherine Wanyonyi is now the only female plumber at a construction site in Nairobi after benefiting from a K-YES sponsored competency-based training program. Catherine not only avoided the stigma often associated with school dropouts, but she avoided societal norms and created her own future.

Investing in Youth

Kenyan youth often find that large financial institutions have measures in place that discourage them from raising capital. To help young people create or grow their business, K-YES has partnered with community-level trainers across Kenya to host training sessions on managing debt, saving, budgeting and tapping into existing financial services. The program also works with Village Savings and Loan Associations to create high saving rates and access to capital.

In early 2018, a group of young people from Chepareria, West Pokot created a joint business named Chepareria Butchers Self Group. Most members of the group dropped out of school at the elementary level and continuously faced challenges for work. Turned down by banks for their loan request, the group was forced to collect contributions from their own savings to raise capital.

“We attended a business training in early 2018 that enlightened us on how to package and position ourselves as a profitable entity to lure financial support from banks,” said Raymond Lotilem, a founding member of the Chepareria Butchers Self Group.

The training provided by K-YES helped the group successfully apply for a loan from Kenya Commercial Bank which enabled them to expand their business. Today, they are the leading distributor of goat meat in Cherpareria and employ many youths across seven local butcheries.

This is just one story of success that portrays the results of K-YES program interventions where more than 100,000 youth have received similar trainings and more than 50,000 have obtained jobs.

Eliazar Owuor was also able to access a loan and change his future after completing the K-YES sponsored training. The training was the start he needed after dropping out of school and finding he was unable to pursue his interest in agribusiness due to high costs.

“I was so inspired that I swung into action,” Eliazar said during an Ading’o group meeting. Ading’o, a group Eliazar helped create, acts as a source of intellectual and financial capital for those in the community. Members and K-YES community trainers meet weekly to collaborate and review progress. Every group member has seen their business, from retail to agribusiness, grow. Inspired by the group’s success, other youth in Migori county have created their own groups structured after Ading’o.

Addressing the Drivers of Violent Extremism

K-YES program interventions are also helping to prevent youth from radicalizing. In Kwale, the proportion of youth relative to the overall population is among the highest globally. They face high rates of unemployment, a major driver of violent extremism.

K-YES partnered with key stakeholders in the county, including religious leaders and potential employers, to create a cross-sectoral approach to address the drivers of radicalism. The program hosts regular forums that include trainings on leadership and life skills to mobilize youth against involvement in violent extremism.

On a larger scale, in 2018, more than 2,000 young people participated in conversations surrounding issues affecting youth and extremism at a county-wide youth summit.

Gatherings like these offer a chance for Kenyan youth to resist the temptation to radicalize and give them opportunities to network as well as register for and acquire national ID cards. Through the K-YES program, over 32,000 youth now have an ID card which plays an important role in the security and social economic development of the country.

K-YES Impact

K-YES has worked with 50+ companies to develop a demand-driven, nationally accredited vocational curriculum and established over 122 new public-private partnerships in key sectors. More than 300,000 youth have been offered access to financial services, business and work readiness skill training and youth mentorship networks that has resulted in greater than 50,000 youth gaining new or better employment.

As the program nears completion, the focus has shifted to compiling and sharing experiences and lessons learned to help shape youth empowerment programming in the future.