 Thank you for staying with us on Y254 News. And if you're just joining us tonight on the debrief, we talk about youth engagement. These are Ears Youth Week theme being youth engagement for global action. And join with me today, we have Wendy Aura, who is a director, Young Women Leaders Connect. And she is also a youth leader. Thank you very much, Wendy, for finding the time to come here tonight. You can be part of this conversation by sharing your views and comments on our social media platforms. That is at Y254 channel, you can also reach me at Patricia McGiocchi. We have like 10 minutes, but I believe we have enough time to really exhaust on everything that we like to talk about tonight. And the first thing, this year's theme is youth engagement for global action, which has different streams on how they want their youth to be engaged. But before we even touch on what really does this day entail, what do you think is the importance of having a youth week? What impact does it have on the young people of this country and globally? Okay. Thank you for hosting me. You're welcome. First of all, youth week is a very important week for us as youth because it's one moment that we as young people and all stakeholders in the countries, different countries, we come back together and we're able to sit down and analyze what has been, what have we gained, what have we benefited in the past year after the previous youth week, what have we done right. And we also look at the failures, the places where we are failing in because as you know that youth composed of three quarters of most countries' populations and that means that they're very crucial in all decision making, they're very crucial in all development processes. So in that sense alone, we need to consider that youth as a demographic area is a group that needs to be, like, to be able to be thought about very well because when as a president you want to look at how you're going to run the country, you have to consider that which people am I running, am I going to manage and you find that majority are youth. So when you have this youth week, you're able to look back at the steps, the gains we've made, the failures we've had and what are we looking at. We need to also rethink the vision we need to reach that day. You've talked about looking and probably looking at where are we coming from, what have we been able to achieve as a country. But before we even get to talk about today, these years being which is youth engagement and see how really can the youth be engaged and at what capacity in our country. Do you think that the progress that we have so far in our country, Kenya, as far as youth engagement and job creation to the young people is concerned, how would you rate that and what's your opinion on where we are currently? Currently, with the pandemic that just came up, I think we've just gone far much behind. Even if we're making strides before the corona came, but you look at the economy has been hit so hard and that is something that is global. So you find that the youth suffer the aftermath of all these. When you look at the existing corruption in the countries, it has never ended. We keep on fighting it, but it's something that is there. It exists within the leaders end. The youth are the first people to be affected directly by such corruptions. So you find that economic wise, we've gone far much behind and maybe this country will need a lot of work to really recover, to come back to the position where we are. And that is even before the pandemic and because you've seen a lot of unemployment, layoffs, a lot of people, just the jobs not being the way they used to be. So economic wise, we've gone so much behind. Let's say now, as we also still continue the pandemic and as we probably say, let's say we wake up one morning and COVID-19 is normal and now the government tries to recover what has been lost or the time that probably has been lost in making sure that we are trying to impact or empower the young people. What in what capacity do you think the government now can engage the young people to make sure that they are part and parcel in contributing whether to the growth of the country's economy or any other growth in the country? So first of all, I think the youth need to be engaged at the core level of decisions. And that starts with making decisions about, for example, if we have the funds that are being allocated for maybe managing the pandemic, so the youth need to be accounted for, how much the funds have been used. If we're talking about Kazimutani, how many youths have been able to benefit from that? And so that means that from the word go, we need to be there from the point of decision making. And then after that, we'll be able to, when we're making decisions, be able to allocate enough money that is rightful for the youth. For example, if we need to allocate money for, let's say the health sector, maybe the education, how much, how well do we consider the youth when doing such, because we need to look at this one big democratic area, demographic area. So when making such decisions, we need to find, to enable, to ensure that allocation of funds is rightful and they're well accounted for. And also, and you've just had today Meshimiwa, the former, yeah, the NAC leader, Honorable Mata Koruwa. So she was speaking about being able to be transparent with the funds. And that something maybe we need to look at, because when this funds gets lost and corruption is something we live with in this country. So in that way, you find that many youths are suffering down there. You know, many of them are suffering and when we can't be able to make our leaders accountable, then they're going to suffer more. Okay. Yeah. When we talk about the young people and when we talk about the youth week, as a director of the Young Women Leaders Connect, what activities do you have to probably inform the youth or educate them on probably opportunities that are there, or different things that can help them become better people? Okay, right now we are limited to only virtual sessions because we can't hold any physical event. So we are planning a webinar that will be on Friday from 2 p.m. And the main reason, objective for that will be to be able to bring stakeholders together. And we talk about youth in development. Because if you want to talk about the theme, which is engagement of the youth in global action, then development is one aspect that the youth need to be at the forefront. So we want to talk about how well are we going to engage the youth? What are the setbacks? And you find that today youth, because of the energy that they have, we have many youth who are taking part in community development. We have many youth organizations that are working towards, let me talk about even the crisis of teen pregnancies. We find it is the youth who are going out there to talk to the girls, to talk to the boys, you know? And also, if it is about being able to donate foodstuffs, you've seen youth coming out, doing fundraisers and doing all that. Especially during the pandemic. Yeah, we need, for us as Young Media Leaders Connect, we are going to work knowledge to identify youth champions in communities who are doing good work in the society. Okay, you've talked about different activities or rather different ways in how the youth have been able to be involved in making sure that probably we are having a better society or a better community. How often do you think the government, because we know the young people is coming out and say, I've gone to school, I have the talent, I've probably an idea to do one, two, three. How can now the government maximize the potential that we have as young people in this country? So first of all, we need to focus more on training. You've seen, nowadays we are moving to the CBC, the format of CBC, because we've realized that it's not more about the papers, it's not about getting the A's and the B plans, you know? It's about nurturing the skills that we have. Because as youth, we have a lot of talents, we have a lot of visions, ideas, great ideas. And you've seen people innovating very, very good things in this country. So when we are able to maximize on the training part, to be able to develop the skills and grow them, then we are building the next future, the generation that is going to, in fact, not in the future. We are building a generation that is able to solve the community problems at the lowest level. Okay. This year's theme, which is youth engagement for global action, one of the streams is making sure that the young people are engaged at a global level. Do you think we've done enough, has you worked up this conversation? Do you think as a country we've done enough to make sure that our young people have assessed opportunities, we've prepared them well enough for the local stage before we now start thinking about going global or presenting them in different stages? Okay, I think there's more that needs to be done on that. If you look at the sports field, we have many young people who are doing well and representing us at a global level, but at the same time they do that, they're represented and then you find that we have scenarios of maybe there was money that was missing, there was money that was not accounted for. So such cases, if you bring corruption in such platforms where the youth are able to represent us, it just pulls back the vision that we have. If you want more people to represent us globally, then I think there's more work to be done, especially being able to create awareness of such platforms and being able to make them accessible. We want platforms which are very transparent and which are not correct because nowadays you'll find a young person talking about, I don't know someone there, I don't know how to reach there. Someone will have the good skills, but they don't know how to present those skills to be able to represent us in the global space. So I think there's more, it's a challenge for us to be able to maximize on how we are going to create more platforms for the youth to be at the global level. Okay, your final, briefly your final comments on these topics as far as young people of this country, when we talk about them, what is your final comment on people, young people watching us tonight? Okay, I believe youth have the right potential, they have the energy, they have the vision, the ideas, and when we be able to maximize these, we're able to open our eyes to these, then we'll be able to be, to create a better world that we all envision. And I think it's a challenge to our leaders every day that they need to think of the youth first in all decisions they're going to make. At county levels, at national level, we need to bring more people at the decision making tables, we need to start thinking about how youth are going to be affected. And I just want to, I just want to underscore the fact that we need to reduce the amount of corruption in this country. Okay, thank you very much Wendy, we create more time probably and have a more rather detailed and discussed probably what we've not been able to tackle tonight. Thank you very much for joining us. That is all we hand for you tonight. If you're a young person, probably you can check out for the webinar that is there on Friday and participate. You can get to learn one or two things. Thank you very much. My name is Patricia Murioki. Do have yourselves a very good night.