 this is the way to do it this is the way to do this is the way to do it as i was growing up there was this cliche that youth are the leaders of tomorrow we have refused gone are the days when people who engaged in community work mentorship and general capacity building were the older members of the community today we have kelvin opondo to just elaborate on that so kelvin yes tell us what you do i have a friend of mine who normally says we are community developers so our work is much involved with the community basically we work with the kids the youths and for now we are working with also the the youths and the children who are within the the demand home that is the juvenile building yes so let's talk about what you do let's talk about the mentorship okay how did you venture into it out of interest and desire and passion to work for youths of my age uh i was motivated by the fact that we face a lot of challenges as youths and just like you say it has always been on the focus that the elderly people understand the problem we go through we go through very well but i felt like some solutions to the problems we are facing as youths we have it on our own so out of seeing the challenges that we are facing in the society that motivated me to put myself into having solutions to be able to solve the matter that we are facing as youths in the society and that is why our focus much goes with how then are we able to improve the lives of the youths or the kids who are living within the community center and because of that we have ventured into different ways concerning also my training we have ventured into different ways on how to be able to solve these matters that our youths are currently facing for example we are just from covid of course we still have the effects of covid until now a number of youths who are locked in the house like we saw the restriction the government had put in place and unfortunately covid found me somewhere else i was in Zimbabwe and i was completely stuck i didn't know what to do until i found means and methods to come back home but as i met youths when i was here everyone was complaining they have nothing to do and so i also thought does it mean that we have nothing to do as youths and i think no it's a lot of things we can do but no one comes out to be able to share with us and talk to us and enlighten us that these are the parts that we as youths are able to take on our own so in the process of meeting youths here and there uh there was two years ago we we started a small program in our community and we thought of how can you bring these small boys and girls and work with them and focus on them and try to do things that are of greater benefit to themselves and to the satiate life so as we are walking into the villages and the community it was like we need to meet the girls and talk to the girls not to engage the boys but is it only about the girls no also the boys they should be responsible these are our young sisters in the community what is it that you can be able to do to make sure that such kind of things if they happen but the rate goes down so that is what motivated me and a number of youths that i brought in in in place that is i'm speaking about the recent past and we were able to start a number of projects in the community and until now i can say that they are doing sorry can you mention some of the projects uh we we we because uh we we had a program with the university students who were at home during that time and uh the question that i threw to them was we do not know exactly when this thing will come to an end what are you able to do so it's like everyone was at home even in the marketplace few people were coming in so we thought what if we gather a small amount of cash and we buy onions and we sell people in their home states and so the question was how do you get the money we don't have money which is very normal when you want to start a business everyone thinks of where do i get the money from as much as we don't have money but still there's some cash that passes across our hands that small bit of it can gather it up and make something great so yes with the with the students we gathered around 10 000 shillings and i made a move uh this is a number of people some of them are my classmates and i asked them for my support and they chipped in with another 10 000 shillings i moved to our area member of parliament gave him our proportion he also chipped in with some small cash and that is how we started and it was of great benefit and of course people are surprised how are these young boys doing this and is it sustainable yes we did it until time came up when they all went to their schools uh during that time as well we initiated another problem within the streets of kisumu we know we have a number of street points within the streets and of course them were also suffering and i don't know whether you've interacted with them but in normal location when you meet them they ask money from you there are any 10 shillings and 20 shillings and the kind of facial expression they give out is like they're really angry they really need something you really need to help them yeah so when we sat down and thought is this the best way to treat these young boys in the street because rarely you see the young guys i thought of it like they are not just street boys they are our young brothers and if we are stepping in we are stepping in to the point that we are their older brothers and we need to help them so the problem they have so we started a program within the streets of kisumu and we initiated an activity whereby we could meet in a certain place we engage in football we do other games and then we can take a meal together and they began to open up in the angle of opening up i realized that most of them earn much than i do it's only that they can't use it well no one teaches them exactly how to use what they earn so with one mind we thought of we're not going to give this boys money but you want the the older youths those who are above 18 we want to make them use the money that they are earning in the streets to make them have a better life an organization in town came in and took us through some training with the street boys and actually the street youths and we designed a method on how they can be able to save uh i was also in that class and that class taught me much more even in saving skills and a number of them began to save like how much do you earn in a day 20 shillings 30 shillings 40 shillings 50 i'm doing write it down don't work on how much you say but just work on how much you earn so we bought them books and now they are putting it down every day i got this amount here i got this amount here and then we bought another book how they're using their money or i bought drugs with the money or i had food with the money so you are able to trace and put a track on how they get their money and how they use their money so from there we were able to balance out this is how much you can earn in a day this is how much you're spending what if you release your spending on this and this and this area and start saving and you picked on that and they began saving and now they have accounts and they are saving their money and some of them started businesses and they are doing so well so that is something that we are actually very proud of again we are working with a number of partners and we started another program at the remand home this is a place where by children who are below 18 years of course who are either in need of uh care and protection that is one or they have been into contact with the law they are placed there for a temporary period before their cases are finalized so we thought of what if again we visit them we organized for some festivals like we just cook and play football and talk to them and open up and they were enjoying the sessions then from then on as you thought of now why don't we engage them and talk to them because they are there one mind that has already been fixed in them is they are criminals some of them might some some of them might be taken as criminals you know when this mind runs into you you get affected even in your future so we also thought we don't deal with them like those who are in a remand home but they are our younger brothers and sisters again we handle and address them not that we are professionals but to get to the level of on their side we want to fill them with a reason with an idea of coming up to a solution the problems I have already faced so we have also been running the program at the remand home that is the kisumu remand home and we are so glad that our activities are gaining roots and they are really enjoying the program that we are doing with them I would love to understand more on how you approached a remand home to give such mentorship because I believe in my own opinion that uh there you've said about the stereotype of how they are criminals in a way they may be shy from meeting people like you how did you go about that we are youths we don't come as teachers we are youths and we easily connect and having been in the streets for two years working with the street boys uh and of course some of them are also caught and taken to the remand home before they either taken home but they're taken to prison or something of the sort so we already have better ways on how we can be able to interact and that's here with them you know once you're comfortable with me once you're able to obtain trust in me it is very easy to open up and talk yeah and the angle of talking we are able to come up with a solution probably understanding exactly what made you be here it's a long process we are living our world of course and defects of course we discuss effects so much but we forget about the course some of them have been undergoing through difficulties and burdens and situations for a long time it might be from the families it might be from school and no one gives that ear to listen of course when you're caught having committed a crime the focus on the crime that you committed not what led you to commit that crime but our focus is what led you there you are at this point you have you are at this situation what led you to that point because if you do not discuss the course of the problem we cannot come to a solution to the problem itself once in a while we are able to trace the families of these of these street kids and take them back home but our intention is not just dropping them home but we also want to listen from the parent side what is the challenge that this kid faces so much that makes him to leave home and go to the streets they are comfortable in the streets but this is not a good place why it is cold i mean your health is not guaranteed your safety is not guaranteed yeah your life is at stake anything can happen at any time and of course you've had so many cases happening in the streets a number of them have died as well in the streets uh recently we a boy was in my team i had a small circle of boys that i was mentoring in the streets it was a very good football player he was washing cars at the stage and he was saving money as well i really liked him i was passionate about him he was so close to me and just all of a sudden i just had it i yes and i was so disappointed because he was someone i really wanted to nurture and see him come out of the life that he was living he was staying in the street as much as he was earning money but we had moved to the level of finding my house we were not paying for the house but we trained him on how you can be able to pay for the house this is how we did it you earn your money you give it to us okay you take your lunch you take your breakfast of course some of them are using drugs and you can't stop them from using drugs immediately but we advise them not to use match so we try to bring in their money and you keep it for them so by that we were able to rent them houses buy them things in the house and this young man had his own house and he was staying in the house but i guess i don't exactly what happened the story was not so clear and we heard that he was he was beaten to death that was unfortunate it broke my heart because it was the team captain we we have a football team at the streets it was the football captain i was very much disappointed and i felt like how will i be putting my life at stake working with the boys and this is what happens i mean all of a sudden you lose them that was one the other one became mad it was from Uganda it was in the streets of Kisumu also it was saving nicely it was listening carefully every time i could have a class with them and i could ask them the things we discussed two weeks ago or three weeks ago we still bring it out and it was so much in current these are boys who don't go to school but they are so bright they are able to speak of things that we discussed three or four weeks ago and that really motivated me and i saw future in them when i looked at them i saw future in them these boys can do better they only need someone who can understand them but these two broke my heart and i felt like i think i'm done with the street program because i have worked on it of course i'm not paid for doing that and i really loved them i really focused on them i i i a lot of people walked away from me because i was dealing with the street boys and now this is happening so such challenges really broke my heart as a person and i saw like my efforts were going to waste but those who are such of the few cases but again when we see a number of them also doing well in business you still get encouraged yeah having houses coming from the street and renting their own houses starting their own business you get encouraged and it's like as much as that has happened something good also is taking place so that motivates us and again i love to say that there are certain challenges you are meeting in the street that you are not able to solve it's beyond our capability of handling so we try to increase our networks with people in the society and hoping to work with different organizations in areas whereby we completely cannot solve the problem we also try to engage with people who at least can be able to offer some support and help us go through certain situations would you mention those certain challenges that you need extra help uh of course we need to work hand in hand with the police we know sometimes probably it's a notion that people will say that police are brutal but again they are there for the sake of us and there are areas where we cannot handle their families we cannot visit on our own we'll need their assistance to be able to take these kids back at home these kids get violent sometimes in the streets we cannot handle them well we're not trained for that we'll need people who are the ability for that and yes we work with the Red Cross there are things that the street boys might need that we are not able to offer to them they come in to support us or one area or another uh sometimes they need to take them home and the remand home has also been of greater help with the knowledge to be able to handle such kind of occasions and even to be able to trace the families of these kids and sometimes to facilitate the means to be able to move to these places and see how some of them can go back home safe yes there is this thing when I think and our communities I'm so to say this we have lost that touch it's like the responsibility of a child is entirely on the parents which is not the case when I was young when I was growing up when I made a mistake in the community before I was taken to my parents the person who found me making that mistake will deal with me right there but that doesn't happen these days I will blame the parents on one direction because if someone tends to get close to your child after he or she has done a mistake you will say that child is mine and now when the problem becomes bigger on the child side when you cannot handle on your own you want to blame people right so I will say this the children do not belong to the parents they belong to the community and it is the community responsibility to work on the kids in a general perspective yes so it is our responsibility when you see something wrong happening for example uh we walk around the streets no no no it is my responsibility to keep my city clean for example right I'd rather pick it because I believe we have dustbins all along you can pick it and dump it put it in a dustbin in a better place so same way I think when we see something wrong happen in our society we might say the police is doing nothing okay we can say our government is doing nothing but I want to say it is our responsibility and to work with those who have been assigned to do such kind of ones yes so uh mentorship requires a lot if I was someone who wants to to start mentoring what do I need to consider our greatest my great opinion will be do you have an interest and have you seen a challenge the community that you think you need to work on of course when you see that you always want to say I do not have the necessary resources the resources is you I am the resource I am the one who can make the change change begins with me yeah so when you want to become when you want to mentor people you have to think of it from yourself what is it the question I keep on asking myself is what is it that I can do that can change my community how am I able today how am I doing something that is making my community my society a better place yes that is how mentorship begins we need trainings yes but what if trainings are not there what motivates you what encourages you because when you speak about mentorship there are so many areas of mentorship right and in this case it's not more of knowledge based mentorship it is more of passion based mentorship I have something I am passionate about and the moment I start doing that I sincerely believe you'll always find people who be interested in what you're doing and they'll come in to support and assist you are there groups or people you've taken under your wing in terms of training for mentorship of course yes a number of people a number of youths not only in Kenya I with an interest of working with youths have traveled across eastern and southern Africa I really wanted to know is it that only Kenyan youths have problems so it made me move to Uganda it made me move to Rwanda to Burundi I made me move to Zambia to Tanzania to Zimbabwe to South Africa and I realized that we are all facing the same problem I even thought of is it only in Africa I had a chance to go to South Korea I also realized it's youth problem is global we all have problems and and this is what encourages me much I only thought that our problems are our problem but it's not the case and I also believe that it is us as the youths the greatest potential we have is being a youth and just being a youth itself has its own solution to the problem that you're facing in the society because we are right there on the ground I know how you feel sometimes I feel like my parents cannot really know exactly how I feel but if I meet a fellow youth like me can know exactly how I feel and with the experience that we have and the challenges we've met I again assume that we have a better solution to help those who are younger than us to improve and make this sort of a better place and has it become a little bit better from where you started yes better tell us about it I I was in Burundi for a year as a volunteer in a youth program and of course the Burundi is different from Kenya we are a little bit developed not a little bit apart let me say much developed than Burundi and I thought of what am I able to do in Burundi as a person I'm not a teacher by profession but they were struggling to learn English so in the organization I was told why don't you go through these English books and teach English to these classes it was interesting but it was challenging very challenging and much more my class was based in university students and they were really eager to learn I took a class for one year and for that one year I thought of organizing an English pitch contest and luckily enough I was supported by the American Embassy around the English pitch contest I was so proud of it and number two we organized for leadership concerts with the youths and right now I have a friend of mine is working at the UN and he was my English student so I met him in Burundi and he asked me what is it that I can do and I told him for you to learn much more better please move to Kenya yeah I will connect to my organization move to Kenya and learn more and he came to Kenya he has been saying in Kenya and actually he's also giving back his teaching French in Kenya as much as he came to learn English and he's being so great and the activities that he has learned in Kenya is now working hand in hand with the UN habitat to run programs in Congo so for that that is one example that I'm sincerely proud of you have seen someone who I'm so much proud of and is doing great things in the society that is so that is so inspiring yes and so apart from mentorship what are the activities are you involved in I love farming yes I love farming and I'm really motivated into that of course I started a project it did not go so well but I'm still marching to it uh training the youths this is again everything that I do comes back into into mentorship I I love agriculture and I also thought and I was motivated by a young man in my society yes so he's a little bit younger than me and I decided to volunteer three months on his farm to learn from him what he's doing so I will go there early in the morning and by five so I was motivated yes so that got me encouraged so also youths can do farming at this great level so I was really challenged and that has really motivated me also to put myself into farming and in my small community in my home setup there are smaller kids who am I encouraged by buying for them chickens yeah and I tell them you want school fees but you can make your school fees on your own so even in that angle I also think it's still mentorship but again so the agricultural sector which has again been able to motivate me so much I I'm a sportsman I love jogging a lot yes it makes me I it brings me to thinking yeah and organizing my mind yes I love reading books a lot I read a lot actually wake up at four yes read until around six go for jogging and then I can get back to my normal duty because I believe in books you read the minds of people normally people say they have they have role models but I ask them how many books of the people you admire have written have you read and a number of people say they haven't even read a single book yes someone says like Obama is my Barack Obama the former US president is my role model how many books have you read Barack Obama then how would you how would you call him your role model and and you know nothing much about what you see on the TVs so that makes me to read books and by that I'm able to get closer to these people more than I can get to them in person so if I want because I'm more of I am a leader and I read a lot of leadership books because I believe that you as much as you go to class to learn that is not enough you need to do a number of things and that's what motivates me even to read more books so I love reading that's really really interesting yes saying that this is ventured mostly on individual decision uh how can this society support or what can the society do uh generally when you speak about support of course you normally speak about monetary in terms of resources funds money to me that is not it you see we have a number of youth groups which are so dominant because their intention was we start at YouTube then we get money from the government yeah so we can run our programs and again if you visit a number of youth groups again they'll say we are not in operations why we don't have funds so do we have to work because of money no we don't have to work because of money do you have the idea can you start the idea yes you can start the idea whether you have the funds or not or you don't have the funds I believe I am a strong believer every good course will always attract support there are people who will be watching whether you advertise yourself we don't advertise yourself people will be seeing what you're doing and they will always come to support you I harm a witness of that out of the thing that I'm doing all the connections of God are as a result of people seeing exactly what I'm doing and they get close and they tend to support so of course it's challenging because you you may not know when this support will come in but we are not doing this for the sake of the support we are doing this for the sake of making our community in a better place that is our main interest whether it comes or it doesn't come our main focus is what is it that I'm doing today that will make my city a better place for the next generation yes that is that is really I'm actually at all like wow what what you're doing is so so inspiring so motivating to see that someone takes that initiative to change what is at his home place you know and you throw that umenda countries different countries to do the same thing and I would really love to appreciate you for sharing this story yeah so that is not just a story that is not just a narrative from Kevin it is a it is a message it is an imploring message to tell you to do something make a change if you feel you have the passion to make a change out there go ahead and do it do not focus on the funds the funds will come as he has said the funds will come this has been a very very impressive conversation and I would love such conversations to continue at your home place at your groups where you meet your friends go talk about how you can change the society this has been new thing action I am