Our perspective on the employability skills of the young people

Nairobi, as the capital of Kenya is a very busy city. It counts around 4 million of people living and working in the city. Competition is very high amongst institutions and organizations in terms of employability. The first criterion of those firms is experience more than qualification. Young people who are freshly graduated are struggling to get a good job in relation to what they major in. 

YMCA as a youth organization that aims to empower young people for the African Renaissance and should be the driving force to connect these youths to opportunities and employment. In essence, YMCA should be a training ground for young graduates and youth with or without skills. For instance, the YMCA national office together with the central branch have different facilities that can be the platform to gain these experiences. They have a restaurant, hostel, swimming pool, cyber and all the departments (finance, management, communication, programs, human resource department). 

Our perspective on the employability of the young people is to see the YMCA staffs and worker being very youthful. Be it for an internship, for a real job or for a decision-making process. From there, they will gain skills and can be more independent in their future life. However, according to what we observed during our six months of stay within the YMCA in Kenya, especially Central Branch, youth are underrepresented in the decision-making process at national and branch level. In other words, the youth representation is around 10% during the 57^thannual general meeting of the Kenya YMCA that took place on 6th of April, 2019. Therefore, many of the youth volunteers have brilliant ideas that they want to share in order to ameliorate the organization, but they are not given the chance to express their ideas.

It means there is still a lot to do because we cannot help youth without involving them in the decision-making process. And our Philosophy from Subject to Citizen implies youth to not stay anymore as a subject of manipulation, but to be hundred percent responsible of their life. So, as YMCA, we should walk our talk and be an example.

In order to bridge that gap, we as Young Advocate for Change (YAC 2019) together with the former program’s manager have decided to give S2C training to the staff of YMCA Central to raise awareness on the S2C Philosophy.

YAC 2019

YMCA Central Branch

Nairobi/Kenya