 Our next guest is in the studio and he goes by the name of Gordon from Semanami Organization. He'll be telling us more about the organization, what it does, how it's helping young people out here and other people as well. Kaibusana kwenyesho? Santsana Eve, first of all thank you for hosting me this morning. I'm really delighted. You're welcome. Santsana. So kindly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Semanami Organization. My name is Gordon Uduwar, just as Eve has just said, from Semanami Organization I'm actually the founder. Semanami was founded three years back and it is a brainchild of a need because by then I was a high school teacher, Barron Voluntarily Papas. When you started the organization? Yeah when I started the organization and I realized that as I was a teacher, there's so many things that really made a lot of impact that really pushed me to start this organization because at first we realized most students were into drugs, some students were dropping out of school, others were in teenage pregnancy, others were actually just truants. So when I sat down I thought to myself how best can I help these students, especially these students in formal settlement because I believe they are the ones that are hardly hit by this. So when you were teaching, what classes were you teaching so that you can tell us which group is mostly affected, maybe which age group is mostly affected by these things? Okay I used to teach across from one all the way to from four because it was a new school, it was hardly two years old. But again I realized that in my encounter with the classes that I was teaching, I could realize there were really lots of problems, especially teaching teenagers in school, especially a teenager who really doesn't know herself or himself or hasn't really reinvented or identified who he or she is. Okay teaching these students and finding out these things, that is when you started Semanami organization. So what was your particular goal at that point? What was my particular goal at that point, I realized that most of these students, they were the way they were because they lacked what called exposure. So they needed exposure and also they needed a platform whereby they could express themselves and also a platform whereby they could find some sort of help. That is why we started off Semanami. In short Semanami simply means Semanami me talk to me, I help you out. What are maybe some of the major problems that you encountered from these young people that you thought that Semanami can actually deal with. You know there are problems that you identify but you know there's nothing I can do about this. Maybe if I do something kidogo sana. So one of the things I realized that when these students sit their final exams most of them don't really do well and when they don't do well they lose hope. So one of the first steps that we did as Semanami organization is to create what is called school conferences. Now in school conferences they come, they get mentored on matters career so that at least at a kwa shule, like if you score your D, it's not the end of the world. If you score your E, if you score your D minus it's not the end of the world. At least those courses that you can do that can help you uplift yourself from one level to the other. So that is one need that really invested on in most of our high school conferences. And also another thing that you also realized that most of these young girls in school they suffer because there are certain needs that cannot be met at home that maybe can only be met if they get into relationships or something like a good example, the sanitary towels. I know it's not a shame to mention it on national TV but you realize that most of these girls they indulge in relationships just because they cannot afford that. So when we create such kind of conferences we donate free sanitary towels to the girls. We also support them in stationary but stationary cutters are cross and also we make it a bit enjoyable for them by giving them an opportunity to be able to express and expose their talent and also get like mandate organizations or studios which come on board just as a way of supporting them in recording their works and also shooting their works. How hard was it for you three years back trying to get these children in the right direction? Being in informal settlements people or just maybe any settlement it's hard sometimes it can be hard to reach out to the young people especially teenagers. How hard was it for you and how did you go about it? In initial stages it was really not easy for us to really run seminar conferences because at first you know most youth they prefer coming at a place whereby watakuja wa kulengoma but when they realize kulengoma is not the main reason as in realize that people tend not to show up. So what we did is that I remember those time we had a conference our first conference actually and our conference used to start from all the way from 2 to around 5pm it was a one week conference at Shalom House actually Shalom House has been our major supporters in this they've been providing venues for us actually for free. Now when we used to have that conference realize that most of these youth could not come at that time when there was mentorship programs because we used to start with mentorship then entertainment at around 4pm. So you'll be surprised at around 4pm wange kuja kuwa me ja ja kwazo Debe, you call it Debe. So wange ja sana and it was a bit of a challenge so what we did was we tried to really fuse it in the essence that we could come up with a program whereby in between the program we interchange speakers and also entertainment and also give them an opportunity to showcase their talent. So they could find a whole package at once. Like you have a speaker then you have some music then you have that was a good idea kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa kwa What kind of talents do you mostly see from those young people and how have you continued to help them up to this point? If one thing I can say and this something that as I answer your question I realise that we are living in a society whereby the youths have got a lot of potential these people have got potential. The only thing that is lacking is that they are lacking somebody to hold them up. Somebody to give them that exposure. Somebody to give them that interview the way you are now doing it to me. It's a form of exposure to them. That is why you realise that for us what we have been able to do in most of our events if we realise you are good in music we give them that platform for free. We tell them if you are good in music come and showcase. If you are good in modelling come and showcase. If you are good in drama and theatre come and showcase it. But after doing so we also identify those organizations that are really into different sectors because not all organizations support drama not all organizations support music and the rest. So we tend to make them compete favourably whereby those whose performances are outstanding we give them an opportunity to be able to move a notch higher. But that doesn't mean that we also do away we also not support those who are upcoming of course we also give upcoming opportunities to also continue expressing themselves and also connect them to the right avenues. And I will say for sure and with a lot of confidence that our conferences have been able to support most of these youths record their music for free. A good example is Shujya Records. There are major sponsors as far as recording is concerned they identify a talent they record the music and they also shoot the music and many of them have really benefitted out of this. Have you followed up with some of these people who or maybe some of these young people that you've supported to get their talents out there or maybe just tell us some of your success stories from Semenami Organization. When it comes to success stories I have many but I'll just share a few. Number one out of Semenami we've had one of our own artists a boy who really couldn't imagine one day he could be out there recording his music and doing so well. But currently though it's not a household name at the moment but I believe in future it will be a household name. There have also been some models I remember there's a case of a lady who came in one of our contests she was so sorry I will say she was so young in modeling and she kept telling me God don't want to compete in modeling but I used to tell with your age and experience she could keep praising me God don't give me this opportunity. Now when I get the lady an opportunity interestingly enough out of 30 models that competed in our 2018 Youth League Conference the lady in my position 3 beating of I don't know 20 something ladies because of that courage and that push who are older than her so these are one of our success stories and also another success story that I will also highlight here those are times we had a conference and one of the boys just came to me and told me God don't you know what I'm having some difficulty paying my fees and keeping up to myself can you give me much information about your details where you come from interestingly enough it really paid me that these are students who use a school the school is home and at the same time the school is a schooling environment so during school time he uses school as an education center but when everyone has gone home that is the home we decided to push through this story and it was aired on TV I think last 2019 the story of the boy was aired and the boy managed to get some support from Meshimiwa Manje from Kajiyadu North who took the boy and decided to sponsor the boy so that is also one of my major success stories that I'm really really proud of other than mentoring young people helping them push their talents out there you also do business trainings to support young artists no not young artists but young business people to push their businesses forward and just educating them more about running their businesses talk to us about that as far as impacting on the young generation and the youth in general we usually organize what we call youth exhibition day that is sometimes it's marked by youth conference youth and opportunity to showcase the different businesses that they do from artwork display sales of sales of shoes clothes or any business that youth is engaging why do we do so? we do so because we believe for you to impact someone it's not about theory it has to go practically so that is why we give them such an opportunity to be able to showcase whatever they have to showcase for possible sales and also three to get that exposure for their businesses so you had planned a conference the next conference for 2021 right but it got cancelled unfortunately due to there is restrictions that have been introduced yesterday talk to us a bit about that and maybe when you plan it next and what you are hoping out of that conference that you had planned one thing just to make clarification we do organize what we call youth conference that is an annual event except for last year because of how the covid cases were now the main essence why we came up with such kind of forums is so that at least we enlighten the youths like we were supposed to do our event on 17th of April but we were forced to push it forward because of the restrictions that were there and one of the major push power that really pushes us to have such conferences is when they come to such kind of conferences number one they don't get back the same they get back with opportunities they get back feeling at least their needs have been met and also they get back at least feeling a bit rejuvenated because for example someone might come to our conference because most of our conferences we include career guidance because we invite to universities and colleges it includes legal clinic we invite legal firms we also include medical clinic because we invite medical institutions to be able to at least address some of the issues that are health related so when we have such kind of when we have such kind of congregations at least when any youth attends the congregation at least he or she comes out somebody totally a whole packet and we really believe if everything went as per we had planned then we believe this conference could have really impacted as many youth out there as it has been doing yearly in our annual youth conferences but we haven't lost hope still we have rescheduled it to 15th of May and we believe by then most of these cases shall have dropped by a minimal percentage and we also believe maybe it was just another way of getting back to the drawing board and seeing what was it that we need to put in order as far as the next one is coming on forth and how if someone wanted to work with semanami organization maybe Ayang Pason who wants their talent pushed forward or maybe struggling somewhere that needs your help how can they reach out to you okay one way you can reach out to us as semanamis through official numbers that I think if you probably will display or have it our number is 0718 18 again 76, 73 that's one way of reaching out to us then you can also reach out to us 0718 18 76, 73 you can also reach out to us through our social media handles Facebook semanami initiatives and also on Instagram semanami underscore semanami organization you can also reach out to us at our physical offices at Shalom House that's where we are located on weekdays and also on weekends okay just awards to the young people who are watching the show right now maybe just give them award of encouragement as you wind up before I do that will you allow me to say something yes please do I feel our leadership as I will say it's not attacking our young leadership but I feel the young leaders that we have are really not doing enough to be able to support or push some bills that can support the youth because I feel that as far as we have so many goodies in our BBI document but I feel no BBI is just a document but more needs to be done because you realize that today Eva as we speak if you are to hire K&T to probably do a play or do a show you will depress your child 20,000 or even on minimum 10,000 but how many youths are really passionate about their talents and they really want such kind of avenues to be able to create some sort of income so I think this is one of the areas that our leadership really needs to look into as a genuine way of supporting the youth but not necessarily by just creating some documentation that sounds good in the year of our youth but really in real sense in practical terms it's really not but as a summary I will encourage the youth to be able to reinvent in yourself discover yourself reinvent yourself and connect yourself to the right places when you connect yourself to the right places you will not remain the same and also if you feel you have a situation that needs some sort of mentorship we have so many mentors who will be able to work with you, take you through and support you thank you so much for coming through we appreciate your time so much and just one last question today we were asking our fans what profession do you think has the most liars? the profession that has got the most liars in your opinion in my opinion is media why media? because so many people feel that when you're on media you're on TV, you're getting the likes you're getting the exposure you're getting that's why most people are really really struggling up to be able to protect these causes that are media related because they have this mentality that in the media industry but that's not being alive no, I don't think you understood the question sorry what you're saying is those people think that being in the media is where you live that good life but what we're asking is for example umenda kwa fundiwa kwa angu umenda pelikiwa angu na tskanshone kwa have an location to go to tomorrow ana kwa ambia sawa baisana ne, come, I'll be done unenda sana ne bado ni ni ni ni ni ni those are the kind of lies you're talking about you know let's say for example, DJs ana se matak chezea satin so umenda kwa patapale kwa butiakia club I'll play you, ni chezea, ni chezea you'll never see it, that is what you're talking about you get it I get you, pardon me for that because I really didn't ask but anyway I think one profession that is really affiliated to what you're trying to say it's the law okay, yes now you're on the right track because lawyers sometimes they will tell you this you'll book an appointment with them they'll tell you this, come this but again something just changes all over but it's something that has really happened to me actually out of experience whereby someone tells you come at this time I'll be having a meeting with you or you'll be my client at this particular time but again when you show up you're like okay wait for another 2 hours the 2 hours turns out to be a whole day so I think according to my according to me I think law is lawyers talk to us what profession do you think has the most layers talk to us on our social media platforms Y254 channel across all platforms once again Goddon thank you so much for coming through we appreciate the work you're doing keep pushing these young people they need a push, they need some help so keep doing it thank you so much if you're out there and you feel you want to support our initiatives our numbers are there you can always partner with us but they will like partnering with organizations it's one thing that also helps us meet some of the budgets as we run these events anything else you want to say anything else kutuma salamu anyway na tumu salamu kwa watua sermanami theater k과akugi kwa ranana theater production yavorwa 50 youth ka bianima na kwa blushu saymanami tespians bina priendazana hacerp šozei subima kwa give mwa m吗 mimi mehwa�� MIC We are taking a short commercial break A short musical break Don't you go anywhere We'll be back