What have I been doing?

Over the last few weeks, I've been really busy at work.  I thought I'd take some time to write about our last few projects. 

Youth Employment Forum

Youth unemployment is a major concern in Mombasa.  However, the reasons for this problem are different for employers, the youth and the government.  This event was designed to start bridging the gap between these three sectors and to begin a dialogue to reduce this problem. 

They YCI and Kwacha volunteers worked together to contact businesses and youth to get them in the same room at the same time.  This was not easy because there are so many assumptions from both sides.  Employers typically think that the young people are lazy and often hire people from outside of Mombasa.  The local young people feel that the government should be creating more jobs for them and that no one wants to train them, so why should they bother trying to find a job.

Joelle, Angela and Mike were responsible for contacting local businesses and inviting them to the event.  Some businesses had representatives that gave a talk, were as others had a booth that youth could go and talk to during lunch. 

Evan, Melissa and I were responsible for mobilizing the youth.  Evan, Kasena (the YCI Program Coordinator/Kwacha Coordinator) and I went to speak to the leaders of all the youth groups at the Chief's office to recruit participants for this event.  There are many challenges in trying to mobilize large numbers of youth.  It is unfortunate, but for the most part, young people in Mombasa only come out to events if they are getting money.  This is usually in a transport or lunch stipend. This way they can spend a minimal amount and save the rest of the money.  This is really troubling because our events are deigned to help people learn the skills they need to help themselves, but they wont come without an incentives and we don't have the budget to provide it all the time.  We provided lunch (although the caterer was super late!), but we're pretty sure that we would have had more people had we given them transport money. 

In the end, we had about 10 businesses that were very supportive in providing advice to the Mombasa youth and 450 people showed up to the event, which wasn't all that far from our goal.  There were 40% women, which was important because we wanted a gender balance.  

This was the first forum that YCI and Kwacha put on with the intention of targeting such a large and diverse audience.  We learned a lot and we're going to apply those lessons to our Youth Leadership Summit on March 17 (2 days before our project ends!)

Women at Work

This event took place at Kisauni (a neighbourhood in Mombasa)High School.  We had a panel of 5 speakers to talk about how women can be successful in the work place. There were 3 women and 2 men on the panel.  

The women included: 

Joy, an entrepreneur who started a cyper cafe (the one I usually go to).

Esther, a local morning show host on the radio.  I didn't understand her talk (it was in swahili), but the kids LOVED her!

Mama Nyvula, a local politician/activist.  She was a former candidate for the position of Kisauni MP.  She spoke about how the boys can't be passive.  If the girls are fighting to advance, the boys have to keep up.  We want to achieve a balance, not create a new imbalance.

The men included:

Kasena, he works with a lot of women, but also recognizes that men can take part in the household chores.  This is something that is NOT socially accepted here.  Most men are embarrased if they help around the house.  For example, The other home stay father said that he only helps clean the windows because it is a form of exercise.  Otherwise he wouldn't do it because it's women's work.

Mathias, a Program Coordinator for Actionaide.  He works with the programs towards female empowerment.  

The day before the event, I had a very interesting conversation with the principal of the school, which may give you some insight to why this event was so important.  He asked us (Joelle and I) if our goal of the event was to topple the men.  He repeatedly used the word topple".  He made comments that children are raised with single parents when the women is empowered and that women want to take the jobs away from the men.  We tried to explain that this was about creating equality and teamwork.  That men and women need to work together.  He then told us a popular African fable.  It was about how there was a Queen that was like a king (he was trying to say that there was no king and the Queen was the one in power) and the government was run by women. The men didn't like that women were in power because they were at home doing all the work.  They called a meeting to discuss how they will take over the kingdom (queendom??) and decided that they must impregnate all the women.  So, all the men went home and impregnated their wives, including the Queen.  When the women were 8 months pregnant, they men toppled to women and took over the power.    It was after that story, that we suggested the principal sit in on the even (which he didn't).  When working with men like Kasena everyday, it's easy to forget that this is the mainstream mentality.

The event itself was very successful.  The kids were totally engaged for almost all the speakers.  They were asking questions and having discussions.  Although I didn't not understand a lot of what was being said, it was always funny when all of the girls started to cheer and the boys' faces would go blank...and usually some boys would cheer with the girls.

International Women's Day

This was mostly my project, but Joelle was a great help with it.  I took it over when Mariam when back to Germany last week :(  We rented out the movie theater and had an event focusing on sexual assault to girls and young women.  We began with a very powerful choral verse from Kwacha and then showed a documentary by Actionaide.  We then had 3 speakers who facilitated discussions. They included:

Esther, the same woman from above who gave more of a motivational speach

Liz, a human right's lawyer who talked about the legal implications of sexual abuse

Fridah, an educator that trains a women's group to facilitate leadership forums and empower their group members.  She spoke about the social implications of sexual abuse.

Again, our numbers suffered because we did not offer a transit stipend.  We had about 150 people, and the theatre sat 370.  Our target on the YCI project plan was 200, so we weren't far off.  We got the larger theatre because it was the same price and it had a stage, so it just looked like there weren't as many people there.  However, the smaller group made for a more fluid discussion between the presenters and the audience.  We had saved time for questions, but instead people were asking questions all the way through.  It was great!  There was also a lot of positive feedback as people were leaving the theater. 

At the end of the day, I was exhausted from running around making sure everything was flowing properly. When working with guest speakers in Mombasa, there is a good chance that they will just not show up.  For the Women at Work panel, some of the speakers came an hour late/minutes before they were on.  For the International Women's Day, one speaker didn't show up and another was a replacement for someone else and she also came only 5 min before she was supposed to go on.  It's just a reminder on how important it is to stay flexible!

At the end of the day, a bunch of us stayed at the theater for the premiere of Alice in Wonderland (3D)...and because it was Monday, you get a free hot dog (all beef or chicken, no one eats pork here).  Insert sign of relaxation here.

Today we started working on the Youth Leadership Summit...oh wow!  I just realized that I forgot to write about the trainings we provided for some leaders to help us with the summit.  I'm running out of time, so I'll keep is quick

Youth Leadership Training:

This was a 3 day workshop for local youth leaders.  Ideally, we would like their involvement with the Summit.  I facilitated the first day with Joelle.  I talked about leadership, different leadership styles and how to create a community action plan.  Day 2 (Mike and Melissa) was on governance and day 3 (Angela and Evan) was on hunger alleviation.  These are the topics that will be explored at the summit.  We will be meeting with the leaders tomorrow to see how they can be involved with the event.  We trained about 22 young people but we'll see how many come to the meeting tomorrow.

It's been busy here and I can't believe that there is only 1.5 weeks left in Mombasa!  I'm going to miss it here.