Being able to express oneself is a natural ability that allows us to communicate our thoughts, emotions, concerns, desires, and dreams. Speaking out on any matter gives a person a sense of liberty, vulnerability, and the notion to be heard. For one to see a change in society, a voice of hope and a firm stand on what you believe is reflected in the words, thoughts, and ideas in ways many can relate to or resist. The voice of youth is an echo of a leader shaping into a light of faith for the future.
The reality in society has a way of muting a voice through its stricture culture, strong views and unforgiving judgment of what should be or not. There is always an acceptable tune that plays as a request for all to follow or receive backlash that translates to stigma, stereotypical behaviour, ridiculed, victimized, and discrimination.
Such was the experience of a boy whose voice was muted because of his HIV/AIDS status. I founded a social enterprise back in 2015 aimed at promoting youth leadership development and empowerment with a focused target of contributing greatly to the realization of SDG 1,3 and 4. When Isstarted I had 7 youth volunteers who worked with me, among these was a boy of barely 14 years of age. This boy learned that his late mum passed on the HIV virus to him during birth, but he kept this realisation to himself alone without sharing his health status with anyone in fear of been victimized, discriminated and judged.
The boy lived every day of his life weary and burdened with the trauma of taking down ART medication daily. Nevertheless, he reached a point in his life at age 14 where he stopped the medication and because of him defaulting, 6 months down the line we lost the boy. A very painful experience for me, I lost a dependable youth leader, very key in executing work and set targets. It is because of this tragic experience that got me to learn about the attributes of a great leader, I began investigating in empathic skills, because I believe that a great leader is one with a healthy lifestyle emotionally, mentally, and intellectually. Hence, I have done quite a number of psycho social-related programs so that I could avoid losing calibers of such young minds in future, because the argument is, if I knew I could have leveraged mental health care on him. I know that many are such cases out there, hence my passion for Youth Leadership development and empowerment is so mindful of building youths with holistic wellbeing.
Last year in 2019, my social enterprise initiative partnered with USAID YouthLead Zambia project that worked on youth leadership development and empowerment with a central focus on Mental Health care. I was hired as a project consultant for this project and we managed to open first of its kind and biggest mental health care hub at Lusaka Youth Resource Center and currently impacting more than 70 adolescents and youths every single week in Lusaka Zambia and since inception, we have reached out to 6,565 adolescents and youths in Lusaka through focus group discussions, debates, community outreach awareness programs, roadshows, and brainstorming sessions.
Through this initiative, we have designed a project called “Build a Leader of Today” which is been implemented in 5 secondary schools within Lusaka. On this project, we are working with school clubs to provide and train learners with leadership and entrepreneurship skills, social and psychological support, and lastly ensuring that we develop a robust youth leader with comprehensive skills regarding attitude, knowledge, and experience. So we teach aspects of critical thinking for effective communication and leadership, design thinking for basic micro-social entrepreneurship, public speaking, creative writing and art, and we offer free tutelage for handicapped learners. So far we have reached to 1,978 adolescents and youths since January 2020, who are simply learners in the very 5 secondary schools within Lusaka. Wherefore, our target is to reach 3,000 from all 5 pilot schools on the project by next month April 2020.
Lastly, our future plan is aimed at finalizing parternships with the government of the republic of Zambia throughout ministry of Youth and Sports, so that by june 2021,we can touch all provinces of Zambia and have all youths benefit from our program. The target to reach by 2025 is over 150,000 youths in 10 provinces and establish youth development hubs in each province.