 In the morning, if it's Tuesday, it's entrepreneurship. Tuesday at Y244 Channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles. At Michelle, as she raised her family across all my social, in this particular session, we dive into an interview that looks into overcoming youth marginalization. It's all about youth today. It's all about looking on ways we can actually improve as young people in the economic sector. So in this studio, I am joined by Oscar Kimmany. So Oscar Kimmany is the vice president of a foundation known as Mentaton Foundation. And Karibusana. Karibusana, happy new year. Happy new year to you. How are you doing? I'm very OK. And I'm happy to start off the week and the year here with you. More interesting discussing entrepreneurship. Yes. It's a pet topic. It's something very close to my heart. So I look forward to some great 20, 30 minutes with you. And I'm looking forward towards this conversation because it goes back to the rooted aspect of it. From the young people from way back in high school, we're going to level up in different aspects and just look on ways we can actually overcome the marginalization and also the mentality aspect of it when it comes to business. So I'm looking to have this conversation with you Oscar. So great. Every young person has an inspiration. So I think the critical part is how do you bridge where they are right now to where they're going to go ahead. And I was looking at social media yesterday, people saying the concern with the young people go back to school or not. And I know that question is heavy, but the issue is how do we make people in school see the value of what they are doing right now in the next 20 years? Because I think just to give you a brief about Mentaton, there is an out of campus initiative with some friends of us who are together in Strathmore and other campuses where all of us are going back to our previous high schools in our own informal way. So we ask ourselves, the five of us are very interested in this topic. Why don't we come together and make it slightly bigger and make it what I call corporatize it, make it an organization so you can do it better. So a leading thought in Mentaton is after post-election of 2007, our president and co-founder Tim Kipchumba and a number of people from Strathmore they did a research but unpublished about what made young people become violent in the last elections of 2007. To be part of the violence. Yes, what makes a young person who was nonviolent to become violent or what can make a person who is nonviolent to change to nonviolence. So they did a number of interviews, I think around 12,000 interviews, looking for various reasons. Why did you do what you did? That is Kibera, Ruma, Mathare, across lefty valley and across the Kisumu, western area where there's a lot of violence. A number of pockets of violence. And there were many factors. And they are using a number of simulation tools to try and ask themselves what are the few factors that you can say that has the highest cause and effect and they had a number of like five to six factors. But they were looking for the most impactful factor that made somebody who was just going on with their normal life. Nice to be part of that. I decided I would ban somebody. And when you look at violence, not just the act of physical violence but drugs is part of it, crime is part of it because you know right now we have a lot of teenage and young people getting into crime. And the factor was very simple. What was the factor? It was a factor called self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a belief in a young person that their effort can get them what they want in life. If you believe as Michelle that your effort here in Y254 can get you what you want in life, you know get violent. If you lose that belief, you get violent. Now that's when you trade off that belief with a politician. You believe if this person makes it for politics, I can get what I want in life. If that person is threatened, that they may not make it in politics, you fight for that person. But not just for that person to make it for life. But because you believe this person can get you there. If you lose that belief, you think maybe drugs, a little bit of alcohol or a bit of inducements here and there can get you a little bit of pleasure right now that feels like the success you want, you get into it. Or if some people believe crime can get them what they want. So when you find all this fight about saying crime does not pay, the thing is not telling you that crime does not pay. It's to ask themselves, why did this person lose their belief that whatever they do with themselves, they can get what they want in life. And that's now what is our leading thought. And now how do we do that now? We use examples of me and you as Michelle. And we put you in front of a thousand high school students and you tell your life. From the time you finished high school to when you went to college. And to where you are right now. And now what you do is you create that bridge between where they are, which is where you are and where you are right now. When that bridge is very clear that your efforts have progressively gotten you what you want in life. That person increases their level of self-efficacy. Part of it is sometimes the young people may think you are the privileged or you don't have everything that is required. In most cases, in other cases, it could be true. It could be true. But sometimes, I think many of us have met Michelle looking good and in studio. We have never met Michelle before. So if we meet Michelle 10 years ago and know where she was in high school and what ever she has had to do and the waking up Alice has had to do and maybe she came to KBC and was a volunteer for an year before she got this slot, we realized by the way, what we have can give us a chance like Michelle. But if you only know Michelle from the girl we see on TV, there's a high chance that the thing you really want becomes the most frustrating thing. I didn't wake up like this. Yes. Exactly, yes. But I've seen many of us meet you like that. So we started doing that in 2016 where we organized counter-wide editions. So we started the Algae Marquette County where we brought all high schoolers together. Oh, right. And we just get limbed events and we concentrate students and concentrate mentors. So that it's... We continue. We concentrate mentors. At 2017, we jumped. We only jumped election years. 2018, we realized that the events are too big. We made them into eight events. Yeah, before we get into the eight event. Because Oscar, you're just flowing. You're taking us. You're flowing. I want to ask a question. So I'm so sure for my viewers, maybe they've been to high school. They have met, you know, mentors, people who give out inspirational talks in school. And I'll give you my experience. It's one thing for you to hear a story of an inspirational story. They come tell you how they made it from point A to point B. You feel really impacted. And then the mentor who came to your school just goes and life continues. But if you look at your life and every situation, things are still the same. Still the same. What are you guys doing different? Okay, that's a very beautiful question because at the end of it is this. Number one, there's a difference between mentorship and motivational speaking. Okay. And that's a first explanation. Motivational speaking sometimes is five ways to, or how tos. The differences with mentorship is your personal story. The beauty of personal stories is they are 100% correct because they have worked. No wonder you're here in the morning in Y24, Y254. So the first difference on what we do is how the story is told. We don't do motivational speaking and we train all our mentors and all the speakers into how to tell their story. Because it is not, don't be an extra set of parents with the high school kids. They are okay with two if they have to. There's so much commanding around students so you have to always take a different approach. If you look at the school system, if you look at older people, and I always tell people when you meet a younger person, don't tell them how to, listen to them. Or more importantly, tell them your story. The truth is your story is beautiful and your story is confirmed. So the first thing is we don't do motivational speaking. And none of the guys who speak does motivational speaking. It is tell your story in half an hour. Everyone is given half an hour to understand it. But secondly, afternoons, you always break them into groups. You're getting it. So we do very intense sessions very early from eight to one. We are very, very intentional and very early in the institutions. And what I like about high school students, if you tell them they went start at eight, their schools arrive by seven, thirty. So in the afternoon, we break them up into sessions and now you as Michelle, we give you a group of 100 girls, you sit down somewhere and you speak to them. Now, there's a lot of now asking questions. There's a lot of engagements with you. And you have a nice with time when you do the feedback forms in the evening. The stories are great, but the interactive sessions are even great because they get a chance now to ask what you never said. They ask you, and you find the things that inspire young people about you are not the things we think as grown-ups are the biggest things that are about us. People want to hear your story. People are still looking for that light that can light theirs inside that make them sad. We balance those two sessions. Number one, we don't do motivation speaking. It's life stories. But two, we always break them into groups. And that's why you have always had to increase the sessions to make sure you have lesser groups that you can manage. So now, even if you have 20 mentors in one venue, even if you have 2,000 students, you can break them into 100, 100, or you have 1,000, 1,550. But now when you used to have fewer events, we would always have extremely big events that is almost impossible. And then of course, everyone we meet on our way, you include them now becomes a mentor. So it's a beautiful experience. We always have a way of growing mentors as you go on in life. And every year, because now you've done three years, we have maybe double list of mentors that we had before. And that makes it easier for us to allow the students we mentor in higher schools to have a better one-on-one experience. When it comes to you choosing the mentors, how do you make sure they are credible? When they come to tell stories, you don't want people who just tell stories just to motivate them. Oh, definitely. So they're legit. They are test. We always have, we are very intentional. The easiest thing is people have met in life. Some we have not met, but we know their stories. I mean, now, Michelle, I've met you. You're a mentor. It's easy to invite you because I've had an interaction with you. So we always have a vetting criteria to make sure. Of course, when you're dealing with students, content is very controlled because you have to go alongside what the ministry considers content for high school, non-political, non-sexual, non-adults, non-discriminatory, non-adult conversations. So the first thing is this, we always vet who's mentors. So who's gonna speak, who's gonna be placed in front of students is vetted in advance. And then you have sessions, all of them, because our team is quite huge now. It's possible for us to know who are you gonna meet. And with life, people learn how to tell their stories. Once they're given a guide on how to tell their stories, we almost have a 99% success of people going alongside. Oh, yeah. As you can see, it's a whole full of energetic people. Young, I believe those are young ladies. No, those are high schools. They mix boys and girls. Just the ones who are sitting in front of a girl. But it's mixed. Where the focus of the camera was was the ladies and the young ladies. The ones who are sitting in front. But if you go through our social media handles, we have a thousand and one photos and you can tell and mix audiences. All right, and that brings in the question of, during this time whereby we were back at home or during the time with COVID was really hitting quite hard. And, you know, students were back home and there was, there's been a lot going on. The issue of early pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, then there's the issue of crime, drugs. Now, when you come to mentorship, it's one thing to mentor and it's another thing whereby this young person is dealing with real issues. From back home, maybe he or she got addicted during this, you know, span where there was, time frame where they were back at home. Issue of early pregnancy. How do you, you know, the mental aspect of it? Is there psychological help? How do you guys go about it? First, that's a great question. And I'll explain it. This problem has not started with COVID. This is what used to talk about. I think, do you mind if I just talk about this before the flip over or you just continue? Let's talk about this and then we can. Okay, these are very interesting numbers. When you're looking at, why are we doing some of these things? You'll find one in three children or one in three students don't have a mentor. And that was one of the major reasons why we're asking ourselves, what do you do about that? Are those some UNFPA data that was there around 379,000 children falling pregnant in 2017 in high school? And I remember there was two schools, one school in Narok, one school in Tinkine, Liffey, where 95% of the girls were pregnant. And you see, all pregnancies and crime dropping out of school is what we call young people substituting education for short-term low-income gains. You'd be short as number one reason my guys fall off is marriage. Marriage is one major reason. And not just the ones who are getting married, even ones who are married. Second, depending on where you come from, agriculture or small-scale holder family. And that mainly affects the places where there are a lot of large tracts of land. Where I come from in Maronga County is Boda Boda. Where a guy prefers don't pay school fees, buy me a bike. There's nothing wrong in a bike. But the reason why I want to keep these young school in students is there was a data that was given there by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that every extra year a young person spends in school, they increase their chances of earning more income by 8% every year of schooling. Increase the chance of earning income because they increase your knowledge and increase your opportunities. So the issue is this, how do you keep young people interested in school? And remember what I told you before is what would make them not lose their faith that whatever they're doing right now in from two or from three or first year and second year will get them what they want in life. And what you're trying to stop is what makes a young person to decide I have five, six acres around, I can do potatoes and make money. Or my parents, I will not go to school because every bike guy around here has five hundred shares at the end of the day. If you multiply by 365 days, it looks like a lot of money. So what makes me spend so many years in school and do that? So probably the person is thinking of the aspect of back at home, the situation, poverty. Exactly, or poverty, or seeing other young people who have gone to school before you and don't have jobs. So the issue is this, you have to always give an example. Because remember the kind of youngsters you're dealing with right now, or young people, we are very visual, it's what you see. Unless you find there's a lot of things being placed in front of us from music to arts to content that you consume. The issue is now, is it possible now to change the kind of people you place in front of them and show people who have worked hard? Michelle, I'm sure you worked hard to be where you are right now. I know you have to be here by seven every morning irrespective of traffic because you have to prepare for your show. The previous night you have to work and know what am I do tomorrow. You read about myself and for here. To be ready for us this morning is hard work. It's resilience. Is it possible for you to tell the story on how you decided not to pick up short-term gains for better long-term gains? Now those things you want to get off young people, they are not best instructed. They are best exemplified. While you have Michelle in front of them, or you have Farah here who was ahead of me here. And they tell how they have lived those things. What you find is this, you have some great effect on it and sometimes we even get that even in grades. When you get every child who comes through the program you get a feedback form. Sometimes when you go back to the school, they can actually attribute increase of grades to how the program was where I run. Because now even the ones who are almost falling off the wayside and wondering what am I doing in school doing high school history in form three? Why is this thing gonna take me? Now they find the reason. Now they have a reason because Michelle came and she did history and she passed in history. And that history has helped her where she is right now. So if we can create that visible path in front of young people and show hard work, we show resilience. We show that the person did not mind discomfort now because we're working for something better. They show effort by that person that Michelle maybe was an intern here for a year. And she woke up every morning to do a show. But now that we are celebrating her as a TV host, we show what has been made. And we have found that to greatly change how young people view things. And look at it even globally. Look at the effect of Barack Obama in the US history of the young black people doing something different and actually rising to the highest office in the world, being the US president. So what was the example? If you look at the story of Barack Obama, the story was bigger than his candidature. Because what he did, he showed many guys actually, you can do it. Because before a lot of young people in the US would either do basketball or cry. But now, beyond that, now you can become president. And as you find the storytelling of Obama to date is one of the biggest successes of that change in the US. All right, going back to the couple of events that you hold on, apart from the high school, you mentioned earlier on that there are eight others. So what you do is this. One edition, we break it out to a number of events. So like on day one, we have four events, day two, we have four events. So mental health in high school is one program. The second program is called is called mental health enterprise. Please repeat that again. I'm saying, so what you usually do is this. When you go to a county, because it's a countywide event, so to be able to bring the children together easily, on day one, we have like four events, and day two, we have another four events. You're getting it. So that now, you can be able to do like 2019, we did 23,000 students. So you have to break them down into many events. So I'll get a mark where you did eight events, like keep here, we did seven events, around 15 events. So you can tell is an average of 1,000, 1,200 by event. So that now we can be able to take down to manageable numbers. But now, mental health in high school is one program. The other program is all called mental health enterprise, which is, I mean, I listened to Farah here, who was ahead of me on this show. It's exactly the end result you want to hear about, is when you look at young people in, especially out of school, when they're people in campus or in college, can they start to realize them or even seeing the economic opportunities that are around where they are? Because every area has an opportunity. And how does the program helps when it comes to identifying these opportunities? So how the program helps is the same thing, examples. When look at Farah here, I heard of me here saying on how she did, she even saw opportunities like pizza, she had access to that knowledge that was not even available over here. So we have seen young people start opportunities that are so relevant to where they are, but it is not the every kind of high life environment. People start small businesses, people start consulting. We have helped convert some accounting students to become bookkeepers for people wherever they are. So you hear the CPA for, you can purely do books, but there is a major farmer where you are, that the guys talk on the book. Are there professions who help out? Exactly, it's the same mentorship process. The training is skills plus mentorship. So if you're training a bunch of accountants or students who are doing accounting, you get some senior accountant to come over and help them give them now the real idea on how it works and then give them some few tools. Right now with all these online accounting softwares, you can help set up an accounting platform for somebody even on phone. So you do the training with professionals who are mentors and then you give them a little bit of tools that these things are available. Some of these guys who are doing media, we help them with social media, management skills and trainings because everyone needs a social media account managed.