Accelerating Positive Youth Development in Kisumu

Dear Partner, 

This year December 5th, we turn 10 years since our founding. You have been part of our journey, supporting our work and helping us to realize our mission of alleviating poverty, improving welfare, promoting good governance, nurturing talents and contributing to environmental conservation. Without you in the picture, this would not have been possible. 

The progress we have made: 

1.  Launching the XChange Bazaar:  A fun and easily accessible event where students in their final year of school exchange skills and knowledge with each other. The goal is to complement the skills of one another while receiving support from one another as a way of moving a step further to start their own enterprises. 

2.  Supporting 5 entrepreneurs of KaaKazini and 7 interns through a whole year of learning in the E4Impact Incubation program. March 31, 2023, marks the end of the incubation program, after which the social enterprise is investment ready, and would qualify for the acceleration program. 

As we think about the direction we want to take in the second decade of our existence, we have community and sustainability as our critical focus. Our project on Accelerating Positive Youth Development helped us to gather a lot of insights on how to better build our community and how to make this project more sustainable. We have been asking ourselves: who needs our intervention? Who is most impacted by our work? How do we achieve a sustainable revenue model? These questions will guide how we weave our community and how we build upon our sustainability in the next ten years. 

We are happy to have you as part of us.  We are better together! 

Obanda + The JAY4T Community 

Links:

• XChange Bazaar
• Charity's testimonial of the E4Impact Incubation program

Hello partner, 

We are excited to share with you our progress in accelerating Positive Youth Development in Kisumu by working closely with established and new partners. We have recently partnered with Better Me Kenya to work with more young people in innovation projects, and Business Fights Poverty, to share stories of success from our interventions in working with young people. We also joined the Catalyst 2030 Network to collaborate with other organizations, especially youth-serving organizations within the network, in contributing to the sustainable development goals. 

One of the biggest challenges working with young people is unemployment. Youth make up over 60% of the population, and 41% of them are unemployed, despite having finished free and required elementary education, secondary education, and, in certain cases, tertiary education. 

We have since co-created 5 social enterprises with 6 young people per social enterprise, with an aim to create more sustainable jobs and solve selected sustainable development challenges in Kenyan communities:

• Sote Tule (Ideation Stage) – builds collectives among farmers in accessing value additional services in an affordable and sustainable way and increasing their profit margin.
• KaaKazini (Prototyping Stage) – connects tradesmen to skills training and job placement to guarantee quality, cost-effective and reliable services.
• SafishAfrika (Ideation Stage) – connects waste collectors to households in hard-to-reach and easily forgotten neighborhoods of Kisumu to manage waste at the source and prevent pollution of water sources.
• Bustani Pods (Prototyping Stage) – creates access to informal education and mentoring for young people around social innovation and social entrepreneurship alongside 21st-century skills and sustainable development in spaces connected to the environment.
• BamBamBam (Ideation Stage) – a mobile application that gives young people access to information on personal development and opportunities for engagement in an interactive way. 
• Barizi (Prototype Stage) – An online tourism marketplace showcasing places, events, and attractions in Kisumu for local and international tourists.

We thank you for being part of our journey and would like to invite you to our 9th-anniversary celebration on the 9th of December in Nairobi, Kenya (RSVP). 

JAY4T Team

Links:

• Youth engagement: Experiencing fun science experiments with chil

Accelerating positive youth development is all about creating an enabling environment for young people to thrive, pursue their dreams and give back to their communities. Through this project,  we are creating partnerships around the common vision of youth development. 

We have since partnered and worked with SOS Children's Villages Kenya, and 60 of their youths through the program, helping the youth establish their career and life goals, understand values, and map their social networks. We have also initiated partnership with Agora Speakers to create a local speakers club for 20 young people in Kisumu to develop their speaking and leadership skills. 

Good news! We received the National Diversity and Inclusion Opportunities for Youth Aaward. We are forever grateful to your support and audience throughout our work in transforming the lives of young people so they can transform Africa. 

Links:

• JAY4T Receives National Diversity and Inclusion Award