 This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Taking risks requires courage and strength. Not many are willing to move out of their comfort zone, but Kevin Omolo is a true risk taker. Let's hear more. Kevin, take us through your journey. I think my journalistic journeys may be traced back to high primary school. When I was a student at Bungu Koraga primary school and Ranjira primary school, both in Nyando, I happened to become a debate prefect. At this point, I think I was good in communication, but written and spoken. So this is where I honed my skills in communicating and my love for media began when I could listen to KBC radio. My father was a good listener and an ardent listener of KBC soil service. So anytime he's not around, I would also switch on the radio and listen to Zili Zopendwa. And sometimes it was nice listening to people like Komuga Kabisae and the rest, especially around lunchtime. But then when I went to high school, I think I was good in languages. So I got more interest in writing at Utenaio High School, Nyando and Gendia High School in Homa Bay. So I was sure what I wanted to do. By the time I was leaving campus, when I applied for a journalism and mass communication course at Masindemuliro University in Kakamega and I was invited to take up the course and that is where everything now blew out. I became an editor of the university magazine. I was also a presenter in the university station and I think this experience enabled me to get to the insight of journalism and immediately I got out of school, I got employed by standard as a correspondent in Kisumu. I worked through the ranks and in 2021 I thought I needed to move out. So I resigned. Wow, you resigned. That's a weird decision to make. You worked up the ranks, so a thicker pilot you then decided to resign. Why did you make that decision? I think I thought I had achieved what I wanted to achieve in the mainstream and there are things that I was looking at maybe differently. If you look at especially the media was transforming and the audience is transforming and I was feeling there is a gap especially among the youths. So I started working out on a solution that I thought I could only manage when I'm out of the mainstream media. So that is how we came up with the Lekrijon bulletin which is a digital multimedia platform and we focused much on giving the youth a voice. So when exactly did you start thinking I should start like Lekrijon bulletin? I think I would say when I was joining the mainstream media after Kampas I gave myself five years. I'm not into employment per se but since there is this experience that I needed out there a lot of things that I was looking into I could only get the chance in the media setup. So I had an ambition of working only for five years and getting out and I'm telling me sometimes you get into employment and it's interesting you don't want to live. So I think after five years I started working on an exit strategy. So I attended a number of trainings I would attribute some of them to DW Academy where I got hands-on training on digital media and since the world was also moving towards digital media I thought this is the opportunity to now get out and utilize the knowledge and the skills that have gained through some of these trainings. So what gave you the drive now that young people are looking for employment yet you decided not reside? Yeah I think it's all about understanding yourself and what you want in life. Like I've mentioned before I had a vision I had targets that I had to achieve within specific timelines. So I was thinking if I remain here get comfortable I may not achieve what I have in myself. I understand that not everybody is into employment not everybody is into self employment. So once you understand yourself it's easier to have targets in your life and what you want to achieve. So the drive was I have a target. What do I do to achieve this target? So you have to work towards that target and that was the drive to ensure that I get out and establish what I wanted to establish. And how did your family or friends take your decision to resign at such a young age? I think it was difficult. I couldn't share it with a number of people and by the way I drafted my resignation letter three months before resigning so it was somewhere waiting for submission years. So I have a few friends that I shared with. I think within the workplace it was only one person that I told this is what I'm planning. With my family wife children brothers I never shared anything until the final month. So I approached them and told them I feel I'm getting out of employment. I think I need to do some other things. And the obvious questions you know how are you going to survive what is next for you. But if you plan your life well it's very easy to make such a decision. It's not something that you'd advise someone to wake up one day and say I'm resigning. So it's something I have planned over time and by the time I was now getting out it was ripe for me to get out. And so what was the goal behind starting the lake region? When I was in a standard media I ventured more on feature writing especially on some of the least told stories environment, agriculture but then sometimes you do some of these stories and you interact mostly with the old people who are in agriculture. You interact with old people who are in environment climate change issues but once in a while when you get a young person in agriculture you feel motivated and you are like this is a story that needs to be told. So the more you tell the stories the more you get interested into more. And I think it reached a time I was now feeling why don't I now focus on telling the stories of these young people who are my colleagues because at some point by the way I felt I needed to get out and venture into agriculture because you could go telling these stories and you find these people are struggling but they are making it. Most of them were getting into agriculture maybe because they are schooled but they can't get employment so they are saying let me do this as I look for employment but once you do these stories and people come in and encourage them they find that it's the opportunities that they have in the simple things that they are doing is so enormous but if those stories are not told to the world for some people to emulate or for some networking to happen to them then they feel discouraged. So some of the people that did their stories we found out that they were getting some of these networks someone is calling you that I saw a story about so and so can I have the contact I want to do this and that with them so you feel encouraged and it moves you. So I believe starting a media organization needs a lot of work so how did you go about it? One I think everything is always possible it just determines how much effort you put into it so for me having worked in a mainstream media I understood how the media operates so when I was thinking of now establishing this I had to go into consultation go into friends colleagues and ask questions on maybe some of the things that you feel you needed to understand before you can establish it I also have friends and people I know who started media houses and they collapsed and you could find even some of your friends discouraging you telling you no I don't think this is the best age for you to do it but sometimes when you have a vision and you want to achieve it you just have to get out there and everything has consequences every decision that you make has consequences so I decided every information that I needed to establish it I have it I've evaluated the pros and cons and I discovered that yes it's something that I can do Speaking of media houses that have collapsed did you ever think to have a backup plan in case something like that happened to you? Sure I had a backup plan I had been doing part time teaching at Maseno University and I thought this was an opportunity for me to understand the other side of life you know in the media we have the practice and the academia so this gave me an opportunity to have a backup plan such that it's not what I was looking at as the immediate thing to sustain myself but I was doing other businesses on the site and also using the same to get networking to support the media house and also support myself and the family so because in initial stages you are likely for any business you do not expect to start getting income immediately so if you don't have a backup plan it's disastrous Yeah and how has that experience been owning your own media organization? Yes I think for every self employment there is always that aspect of freedom there's aspect of experimenting a lot of things which you cannot do in when you are employed so it gives me an opportunity to try out things some of them work some don't if they don't work we come back and try to find out why didn't it work what can we do to improve this and that there is also that freedom of making decision when you are employed there are decisions that have to go through bureaucrative processes so by the time that decision is made they look at a lot of implications such as financial media ownership and all that so when you have this opportunity I think it has been beneficial to a number of people we have young people who are missing opportunities because they can't get into the media houses some of them get out of campus and they think I have to work for the mainstream of the big media houses and once they fail to get those opportunities a lot of them get into depression so we've been providing space for some of these people people are doing good write ups and they want a space where they can publish some of this because the media is just a platform for you to express your feeling express what you have and I find it very easy when I have to make decisions on who I can give an opportunity to express themselves which they may not find out them and seeing that you have tested the mainstream media and now you're running your own media organization what unique thing would you say you're doing that other media houses are yet to do? I think like when we were beginning you do not have resources so there is the aspect of having of the human resource which is a disadvantage on our side so it meant going for the young people who are not yet out there who will not be demanding so much but this comes with a disadvantage that you have to invest a lot in them before they can get there so I think we provide like a mentorship opportunity because if you get people who are coming out of campus people who have diploma degree getting out of campus and you give them an opportunity and you walk them through after two, three, four months five months then you see someone can produce a content that is acceptable then you feel this is an achievement providing opportunities for like a lot of media related organization that the organizations that support media some give grants to journalists to do stories some of the freelance writers do not have space where they can publish their stories so if you provide this because for the mainstream media it's a bit tricky for them to accept many of these freelance writers so if you can do it as an alternative media that what we are providing you find we are giving space for these people where they can express themselves and also satisfy their need to communicate because media is all about communication and passing a message here and seeing that you took that risk and you decided let me resign and start this what are your achievements so far what I would want to say one is the achievement because when I was getting out I have friends and foes who are predicting that you might not go past two months you see so once you manage to go past that then you feel you have achieved something but what makes me glad is that you are providing space for people who would otherwise lack space where they can express themselves especially the youth then you are also providing mentorship programs like currently we have four interns from the local universities so when they come in like I told you I also teach in the university and you see the kind of trouble they have even getting attachment because there are so many students but few media organizations if you come to online I think I've also achieved something by providing authentic media platform in the digital platform today we have a lot of digital outlets and most of them are not run ethically and professionally most of them are looking into scandals so and so is engaged in one two three for the purposes of just capturing and moving the audience but with the experience that you have in the mainstream we are trying to bring that mainstream to the local community so I think that's an achievement that you have made and we are not looking into competition but feeling the gap that is left by either the mainstream or the digital media which are running in an unethical manner Speaking of competition have you met a sort of an organization that is just like yours and you feel like yeah obviously we if you are in the game we are not alone we have a number of people so we look at what in addition do you have that the other organization may not have one I came with the experience from the mainstream media and the networking from the mainstream media so it was easier to divert them that oh I'm no longer there this is where I am now some of our I would say competitors but we are not competing most of them have not had experience in the media most of them are not accredited by the authorities that regulate the media so you cannot put a face to most of them so there is just some site that's churning out information mostly unethical but you can't put a face most of the writers is by our reporter so when we are coming out as providing an alternative which would be like a mainstream media in a local society but providing everything that the other mainstream media would be providing interesting we have spoken about the achievements what about the challenges what challenges did you encounter while doing this yeah I think the challenge with every new thing you are always getting into uncharted waters you may not know how deep it is so when you are coming out and you are starting liquidion bulletin we didn't know one who is the audience that we are going to target so you touch this and that touch this and that and at the end you find out that this is where our strength is so when we discovered our strength is in telling the stories of the youth we overcame that challenge we also had the challenge of finances which we haven't overcome yet because when you are starting out financing is not very easy like for my case where I used part of my savings to invest into one to three to start up the business it was it was not easy because now you are no longer salaried you have to survive from your saving and it is part of the saving that you have to invest in this so you find that it takes time to pick up you need equipment you need space you need to pay bills you also need to maybe remunerate those who are helping you around so this is a big challenge so if but we get a number of people coming in some of them want to support in a way but not many of them would support you if they can't see that resilience so someone would be expecting that if you run this thing for two years then we believe it's serious but no one would want to support you when you are two months old eight months old one year old but these are challenges that we hope we'll get through and where do you see a future in black region bulletin yeah I think when you are starting up we were to bring an alternative digital multimedia platform and that is where we see ourselves we see ourselves having a studio we see ourselves having enough mentorship enough stuff that can help in the mentorship program where we can produce content for audio video text pictures so with this we are looking into an all-rounded generally said that people who come in as as interns of those who come in on attachment can come out as fully molded journalists who can fit in any any sector so this is not something that can be achieved very soon we know it takes time and our hope is that once we get more people coming in to support more networking then we are able to achieve that you are a risk taker that's for sure but what can you tell someone out there who believes maybe niki kakwa ii employment interweza ko sustain myself you know they don't think taking that risk is worth it what can you say I think anything that anyone does has a risk even in employment you risk being sacked so you have to be a proactive first understand yourself and what you can do because in employment there is this term but permanent and pensionable so that there's nothing permanent we've seen people who are on permanent terms being sacked and it can be very painful when you're sacked and you start life from zero what I would advise maybe the youth I know people have different potentials that those who cannot survive out of employment that those who cannot survive in self employment so anything that you are doing just understand yourself know that you are satisfying yourself and you're satisfying your your egos so that by the time you make a decision then it's a decision that you are sure of yes wow thank you so much Kevin for coming I am glad to have sit down with you because I have learned something from your experience and I am sure my audience has learned as well that is how it is you have to know yourself so that you can take that risk your friend's path is not the same as yours it's about you taking the risk to find out what you can do best is it employment is it self employment go ahead and take off because this is how you make it to success this has been youth in action I am Nyangweso Gremis