Understanding Power Spaces

aaymca youth

I’m part of YAC2018 participants ,a youth exchange program that has made me a man on a mission. The Africa Alliance of YMCA’s (AAY), together with their partners Fredskorpset (FK Norway) and Y-Global have assigned me and my 22 other very intelligent colleagues with changing the lives of young people across Africa. Hosted in Kadoma, Zimbabwe, a small mining town. The town has few appealing youth activities. Its youth are often caught up on excessive drug and alcohol abuse, due to households conflicts , most young boys are found in sports bars, drinking and watching European soccer.

Furthermore, another big challenge that is hindering progress of youth in Kadoma is high expectations, such as monetary benefits. For instance, when approaching a group of youth and telling them about YMCA, Power Spaces and youth empowerment. To them it’s a money -making opportunity. As a foreigner, they automatically think I have money, however as it turns out that I’m not, this has led to quite a few cases of excessive disappointment.”Ticha kurova, ewe!”- Thinking that I don’t understand the Shona language, they were saying we will beat you up and you’ll run back to South Africa.

A Power Space is simply a Youth Empowerment Space, where youth are given the space to freely and safely express themselves, through various empowering and appealing activities. However here in Kadoma branch it has been misinterpreted with youth empowering sessions, going to schools, communities and public places and having dialogues is called a power space.

As a result, I and Dismus we apply the knowledge gained from the AAY facilitators. – we began by conducting a survey so as to gain in-sights from the youth as far as their knowledge of Power Space is concerned, then we facilitated a session explaining the power space model and what’s it all about.

The current existing “Youth friendly Centre” looks grey, dull and old it’s very far from being a youth friendly center. We are currently in pro-cess of changing that, though it is very long process. The creativity came in us re- branding the Power Space. It’s being called #PowerSpaceWed, whereby every Wednesday the youth come together at our center or other alternative venues, we call these Power Sessions- Youth friendly environments such as parks, churches, foot-ball grounds only to mention but a few in a nutshell we discuss health related issues such as Cancer, HIV/ AIDS Counselling and other psycho-social topics such as Depression, Self-awareness and career guidance with Transformative Masculinity. The journey to establishing a power space is still a long one ahead and it’s a rollercoaster, Lookout for our promo- video coming soon about Establishing a Power Spaces.

Mongadi Makheta,

Young Advocate For Change

South Africa( YAC 2018)