VAP Youth Empowerment Centre

                            Mental Health and Pyscho social support Block Underway

Plans are a foot to prepare,painting and fixing electrical wires in one of the container rooms that will be used for providing mental health information and psycho social support services to the youth participating in the programs and the general community.With trained counselors on standby,VAP will as well utilize its existing toll free number for participants to receive the same services by phone for those who can not attend physically.

                                   Mental Health Counselors

In the wake of Covid-19 outbreak, a total of 8 VAP’s coaches were trained and certified to become mental health counselors and psycho social support care givers. The trainings have been so timely as most of the youth have been grappling with mental illness coupled with other disorders driven by the after math of covid-19 that has affected both their social and economic lifestyles. The one day training touched on various critical topics such as: self-awareness, developmental stages with key focus on psychoanalytic and Eric Erickson theories. In self-awareness, counselors learnt important background information on what makes up one’s personality and why personality defects are more likely to reduce one’s capacity to grow and develop as human-beings. Throughout the training, counselors got a better understanding of themselves, achieved their personal goals and ready to serve the youth in different programs as well as the entire community. “The knowledge I have gained will be additional to my current skills and will position me adequately to provide total support to the youth and the community, especially this covid time and beyond.” Said 20 years old Judy.

                                 VAP Meets Community Health Workers

With prepartions of settling in the new VAP Youth Empowerment Centre going on,a group of VAP’s master coaches have already started to make moves into our new communities.The coaches have already met a group of local community health workers to introduce to them what VAP does and its usage of football as a tool to empower communities both socially and economically.The team visited various health clinics around exchanging programs and how they can add value and supplement each other all in the name of empowering communities.VAP will be working closely with the local community health workers in its programs as well as local health clinics for referral cases and linkage to medical care.

                                    Programs launched in the new environment

Already a couple of VAP’s coaches have already started working with young people from neighboring communities and schools close to VAP’s Youth Empowerment Centre.A total of 10 schools have already been identified and VAP’s coaches are already engaging participants in both primary and secondary schools.HIV programs running in schools include:Skillz Mtaani that targets youth aged 15-19 and Skillz Mabeste targeting youth aged 10-14 years of age.Other programs have already started hitting the ground with recruitment of participants running concurrently.In the meantime as VAP’s awaits its official approval plan to commence its construction of other blocks:health clinic,vocational training,gender based violence and library,the intention is to run program in both pre-urban and urban areas of Nairobi.”We are so excited to have youth empowering programs in these areas as we usually do have,this will benefit many youth from these areas who don’t have such opportunities to learn lifeskills which is very important to their lives..”Said Mr Kaluki from MGA schools.