 This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. In today's world, where everyone strives to fend for themselves, young people are rising in support of the community through service. Enoka Odongo has more. Enoka, Karibusana. Asante sana. So give us a background of who you are. Thank you Nyongwesa. My name is Enoka Odongo. I am a co-founder of Grace's Mission Community-Based Organization. These organizations operate in Moroni sub-counting, Kusum sub-counting. I also have a background in environmental conservation and natural resource management. I hold a degree on the same from the University of Nairobi. Apart from that, I also support other young organizations and other young groups in organization development and entrepreneurship support. Good. So what inspires... This is mostly about service to the community. So what inspires your motivation to serve the community? Thank you. When I was growing up, I completely grew up in the rural setup from the community. So when I was interacting with the community from my school, life people would ask me, you go to school and then come back and support the community. So throughout my education, I was thinking, how then can I come back and support my community? So this is one thing that also inspired me and also in my community setup, I look at myself as one of the elites, someone who have gone an extra mile to get some knowledge. So what am I going to do this knowledge, to use this knowledge for if not support my community? Nice. I love you have used the word elite. And most of young people that have completed their studies maybe in the university and they've decided to either advance or do something for themselves. They do it to profit themselves. They do it to, you know, benefit themselves and maybe their family. They do not think beyond themselves, but you've decided to go into service to the community. What is the significance of this? What I am doing is something like giving back to the community. The community has supported me and I remember during one of my times at the university the community came together and find rest towards my school fee. So how then can I give back? How then can I say thank you to the community? So this is one of the ways that I'm actually doing to say, to give my hands back in appreciation to my community. Of course there are young people, many of young people they would want to stay in towns to fend for themselves, but I am of a different opinion that we really need to get back to the community because that's also where we have a lot of opportunities and we need to get back there and support our people. And tell us about Gracia's Mission CBO. You said you're the co-founder. So what is Gracia's Mission and what do you do there? Gracia's Mission is a community-based organization and it was supported, it was founded by youths, young people who were within the community. So we came together and realized that how then can we support the community because when I was working alone I could not do it better. But when we could come together as a community, as young people would also consider themselves as a light, we thought that we need to be Gracia's to our people. That's why we got the name Gracia's Mission. So the organization has four thematic areas and these thematic areas were realized after we done a research within the community and realized these are speak to the needs of our people. So we look at agribusiness because livelihood of many people relies on agriculture in the community. Number two, we're actually looking at the climate action and environmental conservation because in today's world climate change impacts a lot in cuts across various sectors, energy, health and even the agriculture is also impacted. And then we look at the entrepreneurship because we need people to also venture into this and we believe that young people and women once they can is supported and went into entrepreneurship then their life can change. And finally our fourth thematic areas is in research and advocacy because we believe in data and in a data technology. So we need to use data, data driven program to support all these programs across. So you've mentioned a few concepts that I'm keen for us to discuss. The youth empowerment, climate change, data involvement in such things. These are concepts that in layman's language the elderly or the community in the rural areas do not fully understand. They understand that Maishaime Panda they understand that the way of living is the cost of living has really increased climate change either it's too hot or too heavy floods flooding and everything. How do you package such messages for them to understand the impact of them doing something different behavior change? I think you I know that's very true and of course those who are part of the generation would understand it but through this that's why we sometimes organize what is called farmers field school. So when we get into farmers field schools we gather and mobilize farmers to come together and through this we have to take them through the training. So if we have to do that of course we have to use the layman's language that they will understand because they won't understand climate change they won't understand the data but if you tell them what's happening which they are also seeing because if you look at the impact generally the evolution in agriculture we used to have abandoned harvest before but this has been changing reducing after every year the temperature actually been rising so they understand this well so this is the approach in which we are actually using for them to understand what we are doing in the community. And what about entrepreneurship which areas of entrepreneurship do you focus on? Entrepreneurship is wide so there's actually business entrepreneurship a business you just get involved in the business but entrepreneurship you have to look at what gaps there is in the community that I can venture into so this is what you've been doing and primarily been conducting entrepreneurial training for youths and young people and also women so through this of course we support them through business management which we take them through the trainings and we also ask them to identify gaps which are there in the community because the only way you're going to breathe the gaps is by providing a solution so we ask them to look at it in the business perspective because you're not going to talk to someone but at the end of the day even these young people want to make money out of this so how can you make money by providing a solution to a problem which you read in the community? And what change have you seen since you started the work that you're doing? I would say you've been impressed by the change the response that actually been shown by young people because in our trainings we develop what is called actionable points or action plans so we need young people at the end of the day we need just to see that our training that we do impact we don't always just do training for the sake of training people but we want this to impact so in most our trainings what we do is we ask young people to set their action points to set their timelines what they want to see achieve at the end of the day Nice On climate change you've said that you go to the communities and explain to them these things that they are seeing happen why they are happening and what can be done so in your organization the gracious missions what action plans do you have to help alleviate such? Thank you climate smart agriculture is one of our key points that we take into we take very seriously because we cannot ask young people just to venture into agriculture because you see how agriculture is much impacted by climate change and when I talk about agriculture being impacted by climate change we have drought a prolonged drought of course we have floods that comes we have insects pest investations and we also have other diseases so for us to oh if for young people to really get through this they need to make it climate smart it's introduce technologies or adopt those ways that would make whatever they are doing resilience to the impact of climate change and this one is one of them is venturing to poultry for example poultry is not affected by climate change is not affected by the prolonged drought is not affected by the floods either so we are also asking young people to venture into other technologies just as big keeping they are also not affected by climate change so and also we also have other technologies we have other use of local available materials such as we have bags cement bags we have local containers so these ones we actually supporting them to create some kind of guidance so these guidance you can actually have your daily vegetables out of it and speaking seeing that how technology has improved and that different things different ways in which farmers are making you know improvement on their farms you know using different types of agricultural products fertilizers and some of them affect the climate in a different way so how do you go about mobilizing the use of you know favorable products for the for the crops thank you one of the things that we've been doing is we're actually currently in the process of setting up a demo farm that's going to train young people on the use of some of these alternatives because of course in the conventional way of doing agriculture people is fertilizer people use the paste sites but we actually just trying to engage young people in the use of what's called agroecological technologies we have like formulation of locally available organic paste sites that can be applied to these crops we have organic fertilizer that also already in the in the in the market today but young people also need to create their own so that they need to cut that cost because in the rural setup where agriculture takes place there's already farm yard maniawa among other technologies that actually are available within the community yeah I love how you're speaking a lot about farmers are you a farmer yourself yeah I am I am a farmer I do aeroruts I also do african leaf vegetables and a bit of poultry improve kinedge why did you decide aeroruts and the different types I just as I have told we're looking at the gaps in the community where can we enter as an entrepreneur so we actually have a very big huge market in in aerorut and also as I've told you poultry is not affected by climate change so and then it's also has a huge market because in kisumu town for example a lot of poultry or chicken that is being eaten in hotels does not come from kisumu county so kisumu as a county has still been described as a consumer market we're not producing our own food that fits us but we rely on other counties yeah so that's actually why I decided to venture into those and also I've told you about the african leaf vegetables it was a huge market and it's also very nutritious today if you have for example people maybe 10 people almost half will tell you that they don't want to eat kelsos kumawiki they prefer kinedge african leaf vegetables so it has a huge market and also resilient to climate change it's not affected by it's adversely affected by climate change yeah so we find a huge opportunity within those setups and how do you mobilize this message how do you reach out to the community what strategies do you use as an organization as an organization we're actually cheated within the community and our office is also within the community our members who are youth are part of the community so once we have this message and each one of these are members we currently have around 50 members who are youths within our organizations and these youth are also part of the community so once we have this message they've spread it out to other young people and as well as other farmers today we continue to receive flock of farmers who come to consult with us in our offices which eventually can they engage in which crops can they grow which technologies can they apply in their crops for example their crops are affected by various diseases various pests they actually are different stages they don't know which kind of for example fertilizer to use should they use urea should they use sulphate should they use JP so we give them this so our office today acts as a resource center for farmers in the community and how has the community or society at large adopted your idea actually in various farmers field school that we organize they actually very happy and we've got a lot of people who come in and telling us we love what we do in place continue and just to mention in one of our field schools I have interacted with one of the head teachers of primary schools so this head teacher said no you know I am so old I cannot get this information so please give us this information we love it you're talking constantly about farmers field school how do you what is it what is it you know and how do you go about it a farmers field school just as it said it's school so school people learn in school so farmers come to schools but we create it in the field so we go to where farmers are so we go to for example identify a farm and then immobilize farmers to station at that particular area so through that we go with our team and then we train them about different technologies and also farmers also used to get interact with us and what we do we also do collaboration with the government and our partners so through this farmers also get to engage with government one on one so it's actually been a beautiful interaction and I would say community really love that after that reason and I can see that you've come a long way how has that journey been since you started your CBO it's not been easy of course it has a number of challenges when we actually started the CBO you know you want to start but how are you going to make it how are you going to make people believe that you're doing something that can support their programs so it's not been easy but we try to use for example my past experience in organization development which I have accrued working previously with a similar organization and through that we got engage with few farmers who of course through that engagement with few farmers spread this information to other farmers and other youths who have now come to embrace what you're doing you've said something very catchy you have the idea but you don't know where to start or how to start so what characteristics must I have in order to start something and you know have it reached the level that yours has thank you you know when you have a dream we have something that you want to do but then at the end of the day you want to see these things achieved at the end of the day of course you have to we will pass through a lot of obstacles a lot of challenges so you must be very persistent and you must be persuasive so that you get these communities to believe people to believe what you want to do so you must be persistent you must be persuasive you must have a good negotiator and of course you need to be a good mobilizer as well and speaking of obstacles what have you what kind of obstacles have you personally experienced during your journey and how did you manage I transitioned from one organization to another because I believe that I personally I had something that I want to do to the community something that I want to use to transform the community so when I transitioned from the one organization where I was before I believe that there's something that we needed to push through the community that I did not have the power to push through so that's why I gathered other few friends and then we started this organization yeah but from that point how then did we would we get out of one point to another so it was not very easy but we had to enjoy and we get into the next level many young people start something of their own and it ends up failing after maybe two years or three years where do you think this is and how can they avoid that I think it's about to believe what you want to what you who it's about passion because of course many young people would start farming would start business but if you're not passionate about that thing of course you won't hold into it so passion is very important if you're passionate about that it would actually sail through but of course we have some people who start with the mind of I need to make money out of this so if you stay even in the organization so even some people start the same organization because they want to make money out of it they want to don a fund so when you wait for two years three years even a one year and there's nothing coming through of course just leave it and go away so passion is very important in this passion is very important and speaking of you said that you decided let me collect a few friends of mine so that we can start this what motivated you to start it with friends other than starting it on your own other someone who says if you want to go far go along but if you want to go further go with people so that's what drove me to working with people and working with friends and of course friends and more people give you more energy more support and I've personally explained that because sometimes you go through you actually use your own resources I've used my own resources so sometimes you find yourself at a point that you really want to drop but the friends say no let's move let's move on so they've actually given me a lot of energy in morale in doing this so I would actually recommend that if anyone wants to start it's always good when you get together and move as a team it's always beautiful and gives energy and more passion of course so in addition to Gracia's mission what other activities are you involved in currently I was nominated to be part of a Board of Governors of Kiguchi Evocational Training Centre and I think this is from my activities and my work in the community so I'm in charge of technology in that institution I also serve as a value chain lead I'm in charge of value chains agricultural value chains lead in one of the organizations it's called Kisumu Young Agrippinois so this was an umbrella of young farmers in agribusiness in our agrippinoiship in Kisumu County and I'm also a farmer I think I've also mentioned that and personally I'm also a consultant I support also small organization in the prinoiship business development grant and proposal development yeah I'm also support other young people in life skills and into an employability skills set you have many hats what is your secret just passion passion and what what we do from the community because most of this thing that we do we do them from the bottom of our heart and then we also do them voluntary so once you do this in voluntary you get to learn a lot in the way yeah and so if I I'm interested to get in touch with you and maybe partner with you as an organization where can I find you uh wherever office is in umbei there's a place called umbei it's along Ahiromi Wani Road eight kilometers from Ahiromi town yes yeah and maybe my contact is zero seven eleven nine eight two five nine zero okay yeah and uh so you this is a quite a positive initiative you know creating solutions where you feel there is a problem and advocating for different changes in society what advice do you have to young people or community who desire to see that change that they want to see but they lack maybe the motivation to start or they don't know how to start or they lack the the knowledge thank you um I think one of the energy that we get is that we are and sometimes when I see my age I would want to be more younger so that I can do these things I've interacted with people age and they said me I wish I did what you're doing when I was at your age so we have a lot of power as young people and there was a lot of opportunities that are also coming away as young people and so it's young it's the young people who can transform our communities because people who are already aged would not think about something new would then bring something new to the community but it's the power of young people so it's only the young people who can make that transformation and let us think about the community let us think about other people when you think about other people of course your ways will open up but of course you have a couple of other people who think about themselves so it's always important to think about other people and I think I love one of the advice from one of the Chinese below news it's called Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba Jack Ma says that when they started Alibaba they were thinking how can we support other SMEs you know so through supporting other people other SMEs today Alibaba is one of the biggest global companies that we have so let us think about how can we lift other people other people how can we lift up other communities because we have the knowledge we are flexible now we can do research and this can adapt to the community's transformation wow I love your call to action it's very important that young people understand that offending for yourself is important but service to the community is will guarantee much success yeah so you have had it as a young person you have a lot of power you have the power to influence change you have the power to bring success to your community and to yourself to not neglect you know the power of collaboration take advantage of it take advantage of the knowledge that is you know you can get it anywhere the internet is present digital technology has improved greatly and you can use the information to start something of your own and guarantee it to success with the power of collaboration this has been Youth in Action I am Nyongwesa Grenis see you next time