By Henry Owino
Nairobi, Kenya: The number of unemployed youth in Kenya continues to surge as opportunities for employment narrows. With the prevailing situation becoming a reality in the country, young people are urged to venture into creative and innovative developments.
As potent agents of change in the society, young people are encouraged to tap and utilize their creative skills, talents, and technical know-how to come up with unemployment solutions. Innovative initiatives are said to be the most effective way of transforming the world into a better place.
Youth are therefore challenged not to sit on their ideas and creativity but instead turn them into innovative projects. This is so as creativity serves as the driving force behind innovation, enabling the introduction of new ideas, solutions, processes, business models, products, and services.
Innovation helps in challenging the status quo, encourages a different perspective, and liberates people from the constraints of conventional thinking. These were remarks made by youth leaders and mentors during the youth meeting held in Dagoretti, Nairobi to mark the International Youth Day celebrated on 12 August, annually.
Youth drawn from major Nairobi slums attended the forum organized by Action Aid in partnership with Global Platform to let youth talk freely about their smart climate change initiatives. The youth leaders and mentors, on the other hand, were there to empower youth-led climate action initiatives and help in strategizing and involving the young people in various climate change forums.
This year’s theme is: ‘Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World’ chosen internationally by the United Nations believing that transformation towards a future is both ecologically sustainable and climate-friendly and hence of utmost importance.
According to Jeremiah Mauti, Ward Administrator in Nairobi City County, youth in Nairobi County are very innovative but do not want to push hard for opportunities. He regretted that many wait for opportunities to come their way which in real life is almost impossible.
Mauti challenged the young people to be aggressive in looking out for opportunities instead of waiting for miracles to happen to their innovative initiatives. He pointed out that it is only through recognition that organizations are able to identify such projects for partnership or funding.
“Innovation comes with responsibilities which include; branding, packaging, self-presentation, and the products must be market demand driven. For example, any competitive initiative to attract consumers or potential funders, it must stand out in order to catch the eyes of donors,” Mauti said. So, please let’s improve on those small issues but very important,” he added.
On his part Kennedy Odweyo, who works at the Ministry of County Government encouraged youth to invest in social innovation approaches which are powerful forces for driving systems change, as they challenge the status quo. In addition, it promotes collaboration and engagement and creates new models and frameworks for addressing complex social and environmental challenges.
“Social innovation may attract organizations of all kinds to involve themselves in a collaborative process. It could bring nonprofits, investors, and technological researchers together to identify local or global needs and create solutions,”Odweyo explained.
However, Odweyo clarified that the process of creating lasting change on complex challenges takes time and requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. He, therefore, urged the youth to be patient with their innovative initiatives as some may not take off as expected.
It is said that necessity is the mother of all inventions and thus Calvin Shikuku the CEO and Founder of Motobrix Limited has transformed the lives of communities in Mathere slum by providing eco-friendly and affordable renewable energy briquettes made from waste materials.
Shikuku said it is a community project that provides cheap briquettes to unprivileged families who spend a significant amount of money to meet their energy needs. To date, this initiative contributes to clean energy saving trees thus logging, free of air pollution, cutting costs thus eradicating extreme poverty hence climate action-led initiative.
“Schools run their feeding programs more effectively by utilizing cheap briquettes. Plans are underway to scale up and reach a wider population,” Shikuku affirmed. Our plan is to reach out to more communities possibly across the world for its adoption because it is a people-led development approach that guarantees sustainability and long-term impact.” He emphasized.
Other organizations represented in the meeting include; Slum Going Green and Clean from Kibera led by Bryan Gisore, and Recycling Waste Management headed by Judy Wandia, among others with the sole agenda of using innovative skills for greening the environment towards a sustainable world.
