 Yes, in the spirit of youth in politics, it is good for us to venture into those who are passionate about developing our country. So before, without further ado, because Anul, now we already know you, can everybody else please introduce themselves? Thank you so much. I'm not new in the house. I'm Benjamin Diyema, kiruriri from the Catholic University of East Africa. I'm the chairperson Youth and Governance Initiative Transware County Chapter and the president, Trusa, famously known as North East, Northwest Rift Student Association. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Asa anti sana. Good morning. I'm Rift Revmongi. I'm a student at the University of Nairobi. I'm also the secretary of the Champions for STJs and I'm glad to be here. All right. Good morning. Good morning. I am Diana Njeri and I'm a student at Multimedia University of Kenya. Yes, and I'm glad to be here. Oh, asa anti sana. Hi, my name is Kevin Srandiak. I'm actually a communications consultant. I play multiple sector roles in that I look at the possibility of really ensuring STJs are implemented, needs to cut across sectors and I'm passionate about education, health, infrastructure and actually clean water and sanitation. And it's a pleasure being around. Thank you. All right. Hi. Hello. Iza Kiego and I am a social media strategist. I'm also a student at J-Quart current campus. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Lewa Yaki. I'm a medical student, Kenya Medical Training College current campus. Passionate about good health and well-being. All right. Thank you for having me. Well, we'll be glad to have you. Anyway, so in the spirit of the big four agenda, which is the affordable housing, food security, universal health care, infrastructure development, please do. We do have a big breakdown of the 17 SDGs, which are the Global Sustainable Development Goals and we have for this particular country, which you can break down in the speech of those four. So, Heshimewa from NYC. You're very passionate about number two, zero hunger. Why? Well, as an advocate of young people and we all aware that the bigger population of this country are young people. And when we talk about young people, we are talking about young parents and young fathers of this nation. And so my worry is a young person when I wake up in the morning that being in a position to feed my family. And so if you wake up and you're clueless of where you're going next, where you're going to get your meal, that should worry you. And that should worry us as a nation. And that is why I would want to see Kenyan, especially the young population, being in a position to be able to provide for their family. And this providing for their family is merely to be able to put food on the table. And that is our concern as young people. And that is why I'm very passionate about this. At the SDG, we have committed ourselves as a nation and contributing to what we call the SDG. We, ours was adopted in 2016. And when we adopted that, we also agree that this is a world concern and a concern for us. And we've also localized that as a priority for us. You see, we have 17 goals. But Kenya in its own right decided that this number two will also be part of our priority. And that is why I think we need to just do much more than just having it part of our priority. And not doing enough to ensure that Kenyans and its citizens are able to put food on the table. Okay. So how are we going to put food on the table? Can we talk about that? So I think it is very important that institutions in our country start practicing good governance and also accountability. Because those two are the fundamental principles of strong institutions. And when institutions in our country are strong, we'll be able to achieve things like good health and well-being. Our facilities will be able to provide quality healthcare services to their populations. Young people will be able to access education, quality and affordable education. There will be gender balance in aspects of opportunities and things that young people can take part in. And they'll also be decent work and economic growth. All right. Kevin? Ya, these SDGs actually, they are one of the most important goals we have in our country. I think being broken down into four famously as the big four agenda. I wish to say this, you know, as a country you said you're tackling zero hunger. As a country it's like Kenya is drowning. Like the case of recently, you aware that the MPs, they are now digging down deep into pockets with the taxpayers. They want our money to pay their rents. And you know, this is a group of people who are guzzling rivers of vodka every weekend, courtesy of our accounts. Yet the local manayinshi in town is suffering. Yet you expect that the whole country should be in a position to provide for themselves. We need to do something as advocates of their SDGs. We need to do something good to save our country. Okay. Thank you for the question. So if we discuss in zero hunger, I think our focus as a country should divert food security. How food secures Kenya? I think we are at a very alarming rate, considering the recent cases of people dying out of hunger. I think the system that is set up in feeding our nation is failing because we are focused really on exports of non-food items while our focus should actually be food. Like we need to first feed our nation before feeding the next nation. 15 years ago, we used to have maize. It was a staple food. We had maize all over. But now it's alarming that we're actually importing maize from Uganda. So I think we need to implement systems that will support the farmer to actually provide to the community itself so that at least every other Kenyan is food secure every other day. Fantastic. Thank you. Kevin, you really had something to say. So probably on the zero hunger perspective, I look at it not from the negative trends that have happened, but probably what you need to do to just champion zero hunger. And my perspective is, you see, right now there's the issue of we're not sure when the rains take place. There's so much change towards climate change. My proposition would be why can we not put so much focus on value chain because it's been raining right now, yes. And it's been raining so there's going to be excessive production of skumawiki, for example. And I really wish a desire from our policy advocacy bit and I will kind of package this with Tivet, the technical vocational and education training but can we just really push the essence of how can we enhance value chains in our cropings, in that we're not producing excess. How can we convert this excess to last for a period of like six months in that cows take vegetables. So could there be a possibility of processing that excess vegetables into powder so that probably when we don't have rains, we'll kind of have powder which cows or rather our life's are going to take. So my perspective on zero hangars right now is from a point of how can we escalator infrastructure to champion the value chain within our production bit and probably that's what I wanted to emphasize when it comes to the zero hangar perspective. Probably maybe someone? Okay, thank you too. Hadun what my fellow colleague has said. Okay, I think as a nation to tackle the issue of zero hangar we need to do something we call diversification. So as he has said, let's take for example there are two things we have here. There is a cow which can consume a vegetable, right? So we need to diversify in a certain way that we ensure people not only concentrate on a specific food in certain regions. Thank you. Hadun what he has said also. Mine goes to climate action. What are we doing about our climate changes? Right now we have... SDG n.13, can you say which one it is? Right now we are having the rains and I feel like we are not prepared for the floods. We'll have so much water going to waste yet some few months to come we'll be borrowing food aid from countries abroad. We need to curb the climate change we need to curb the SDG n.13 so that we can be sure that SDG n.2 will be a success. Fantastic. Jennifer, do you have anything to say to us this because I know you are waiting for SDG n. where is it? N.16. N.16. Alright, alright. Okay, so first... yes, a brief background on SDGs. So SDGs as Arnold had stated, picked up from the MDGs which were the Millennium Development Goals and we failed to achieve a majority of them and that's one thing as a global community we failed to actually state and acknowledge that we failed to achieve our MDGs before we even moved to the SDGs then we ended up adopting a whole set of 17 goals and they are also broken down to further targets so if you read in depth you will see that there are further targets each goal has from six all the way to nineteen nineteen is goal number seventeen which is partnership which has nineteen targets each targets also have indicators to indicate how each country is performing in terms of achievement so this development blueprint really harmonizes development strategies for countries all over the world now as you have stated I'm kind of a peace strong institution kind of person because of my background now this peace justice and strong institutions is a ring sort of a golden ring that also harmonizes all the other 16 goals that are involved because without strong institutions you cannot deal with climate change without strong institutions you cannot deal with goal number ten which are inequalities that are are seen within various classes in developing countries so that aspect of peace justice and strong institutions needs to be harnessed now bringing that back home they need to implement the constitution now our 2010 constitution brought forth hope for Kenyans that this country can be transformed that there can be hope for good governance for once and the constitution also introduced various institutions that were not there in the 1969 constitution so we have checker mechanisms we have the rule of law we have what I call probably which could be the fourth arm of the constitution the fourth arm of government we have the constitutional commissions which are listed in chapter 15 there's so much hope in that constitution which Kenyans said yes to and if we implement that I believe we can have strong institutions and regardless of the leadership at the top then we'll be able to actually ensure that the spirit of the constitution is implemented and if implement that all of these goals from goal one to 17 all of them are enumerated in our constitution in one way or another social economic rights article 43 they cover inequalities when we talk about climate change there's a whole chapter about climate change so there's so much so I believe that our constitution is harmonized within the 17 goals and also of course we have different also development blueprints from their vision 2030 to what you just mentioned the big four agenda and the government also went ahead to actually institutionalize a committee to check the implementation of the goals in 2016 so there's so much being done but the realization of these goals can only be seen when you implement the constitution so for you number 16 is the key to number one to 17 it is key allow me to add something I also think that in addition to what my colleague has just said partnerships are very important if we are to achieve these goals because if one person is working on good health and well-being another person is working on climate action and you're also working on strong institutions we need to work together as a team and our outcomes are able to contribute to a common pool of sustainable development myself I have been working on good health quality education, gender equality and partnerships for a long time and specifically for adolescents and young people and you realize that in our policy environment we have policies that exist however the problem is implementation whether they are actually implemented on the ground for example for policies that concern adolescents and young people we have the adolescent sexual reproductive health policy of 2015 and the national guidelines for provision of youth friendly services in health facilities and also the constitution of Kenya 2010 so there are policies but however the implementation on the ground is really wanting and we would like to urge policy makers and people in government so that we can unite and work together because when we work together wait can we wait for the chairman to respond to that first when it comes to the implementation where are we going I think we must also appreciate that we cannot achieve all this in a day it is a process achieving all that we want made take time the most important thing is that are we the right track to be able to implement this or to have policy and the national youth council have been working on a youth policy this country has not been able to have a youth policy for quite some time and that is why we have been reviewing the national youth council policy that are also getting views from the young people all over the country from last year and that will be in place very soon it's only waiting some ascent so that is a step towards having a policy but we also realize that there are policies that are beyond national youth council what the national youth council can do is also to support or air the voice of young people on particular policy that affects young people and that is the role of the national youth council that is to inform or be able to do a research and say that this policy would affect young people in this particular way and so this is our opinion how this policy needs to be handled Just to appreciate what he just said I participated in the review of the national youth policy giving input towards what we would like to be included in the new one and I think we are making progress towards the right direction and I'd also like to add young people at home to take the initiative of participating in activities that will contribute to shaping our future For example when we hear calls to participate in the CIDPs to the review of policies let's turn up and give our views so that we make sure that our voices are heard and then for our leaders and the people were supposed to implement policies we urge them all to make sure that they are fully implemented so that they benefit the people as stated in the policies Okay before we people want to comment please can we make it real quick so that we can talk about something really important to the SDG number 3 Okay thank you I'd like to address the point that the institutions need to implement it I'd like to say I as a Kenyan I as a citizen I need to take the first step for example if we are dealing with climate change SDG 13 what am I doing in my own compound what am I doing in my own immediate community I think I mean like right now we have rains how many trees are you planting how many trees are you actually growing not only planting what are you doing to teach your next generation on the culture of actually preserving the climate what are you doing to pass this information to your next generation so I think it starts with I as an individual and then support the government because we are the people so we need to support the government the institutions in place for us to actually move Jennifer you had something to say Just to add on what she said I believe that SDGs are not abstract they are not this thing that are up there in the sky that we need to reach out to SDGs are contributed to by the activities we do each and every day and there's been a movement across the globe that identifies or seeks to sensitize young people that even if you're doing a small business you're contributing to SDG No. 10 even when you're doing your small social entrepreneurship project you're contributing to SDG No. 16 so they are not abstract they are not this beautiful fancy UN goals there are things that we actually contribute to every day we're already doing it we just need to be aware what are the targets how can I improve on them and it's important let's know the statistics let's know that for example 20% one in every 10 people leave below is it $1 a day so realizing that actually knowing what you're working towards is what we need to do and it will also help us like emphasis and add an oomf to what we're doing I like that add an oomf to what we're doing we do it every day and I'm hearing that's what you're saying what are you doing in your own family in your own compound and that's it and that's how we'll be able to change even what we are facing when it comes to the climate because they don't understand well there I really want to talk about good health and well-being which is SDG number 3 you're very passionate about that can we please hear from you I'm quite passionate about good health and well-being because I believe that mental health is a key factor in the overall well-being of an individual it all starts in your brain I'm a nutritionist I believe in good health I believe in eating right I believe in exercise as long as my mind is not a check then I'm not healthy and I feel like it's a message that we need to take it out there we need to create awareness depression is real it's happening especially among our young people and we live in a society where depression is seen as a sign of weakness and depression is such a I like to call it a silent killer because it's so easy to say Hilda, you've broken your arm because I can't see it but it's so hard to tell someone I feel empty, I feel confused I don't know what is going on some will just tell you what you need to snap out of it you need to stop being a big baby and you need to compose yourself and it's happening because one unemployment youths are frustrated we are out here, we've graduated with good grades but then you're working with your CVs every day so we need to as much as we are creating awareness we are talking about mental health we need to come up with the right intervention to make sure that we completely curb this illness called depression especially among our youths let's have zero cases of suicide let's talk about it all I'm asking for the youth let's just talk about it's okay to not be okay it's okay to not be okay Kevin I think the way she's expressed it is also so catchy this is what probably I want to say about mental health in regards to young people I look back probably like 5 years on myself 5 years ago where was I what was I doing what is to push me did I suffer mental health I'm not really sure actually that's a question I always ask myself on each and every day maybe I suffered mental health but the question I ask myself is how did I overcome it because we all have problems but how do we handle our problems what encourage us to keep on pursuing and that's probably when I link it up to the quality of education one of the key things I would really probably want to say in line with mental health are you self aware about yourself I mean that self awareness of use that self awareness of use in terms of whom you are is actually really critical to young people because we always face challenges but when you face this particular challenge it doesn't mean that you have to kill yourself it doesn't mean that you have to think suicidal thoughts suicidal thoughts we are here discussing issues I believe all of us probably here have kind of had some issues that affected us but the key thing probably I would wish to hear also from each and every person within the room is how did we overcome because yes it's a different thing talking about mental health but for me maybe on half overcome my challenges which I can testify is that particular belief of there is hope in tomorrow I think you can't over comment that's basically what I can say I would like to pick on something you've mentioned when it comes to our health and well-being the quality of education that we are receiving is also not really helping us when it comes to how we are dealing with our issues so can I hear someone comment on the quality of education that we have real quick because we are kind of running out of time so we need to be really quick with our comments oh chairman maybe I can comment on something it is an aspect of good health and well-being which is called sexual health for young people now I know you have taken us to sexual health when you were talking about it I'm briefly highlighting on that because it's very important that young people are able to receive also complete physical emotional and mental well-being because that's an aspect of good health we've seen rates of teenage pregnancies rise in the country and I feel like it is very important that we come together as religious leaders the ministries of education young people, teachers, parents so that we deliver it we find a way of making sure that young people access quality reproductive health okay please chairman can we hear what you have to say about education well I want to believe that we have good if not the best education policy or system within the country within the region I think we have a good system I told you that we value too much education than looking at how much do we invest in ourselves education is not just going to school we are also looking at how much to the well-being if you're going to do engineering how much are you told about the other life issues than just doing having the engineering course or you doing the unit that touch on engineering and so I think we just need to include some of the real life because you also look at today in young people are sharing a lot on social media that is not supposed to be shared out I'm not saying there's a limit of what you can share we have young people who are very fragile they are going through a lot that they would want to share everything so I just want to believe that there are some component that we also need to include component of life scale life scale is not supposed to just believe to be taught in primary level and then we feel that you are the university level and not supposed to be taught life scale they also supposed to be beneficiary of life scale we also say that when we talk about sustainable development goal the concept here is sustainability and so how do we sustain the issue as we talk about all this that is the reason why I say let us look at the symptom why are young people committing suicide why are young people going through mental health or mental issues probably they are not able to get something to do after attending a university for all five years they are just at home probably they are not able to feed their families after having some babies when you have a baby the responsibility that you feel you must provide and so when you are compared with such issues some of us will go under through what we call the problem of mental health and let us then look at why are young people going through such problem and then when we are able to treat that we are good to go now we can hear some response there is a lady at the back who really wanted to say something please can we give her an opportunity I wanted to say that everything here comes back to accountability accountability is not just about families it is accountable about families when you talk about SDG and mental health and zero hunger are you accountable for yourself as a person do you know that are you accountable for yourself mentally as a person because if you say that you want to wake up today and make sure that your mental health is fine then you have to know what what you need to do you have to know how you overcome things so I think all of these things the 17 of them go back to accountability on an individual basis all right Jennifer I don't want you to live without talking about something which is the when it comes to institutions here in Kenya we've had the issue of the huduma number and I know we were very excited about that and recently the other day we had a rumor that it was hacked and what and then we have fine we are developing new technology and what have you but how safe is our data yes huduma number I think the CS CS Matiangi gave a report and stated that the leak that we had that was a UON student that had leaked that had hacked the system isn't true I will stand by that because I am not privy to the hacking and whatnot however we don't have a data protection law to be honest from a legal perspective we don't have a data protection law all we have is a constitution and we have a data protection policy the constitution provides for the right to privacy it provides for the right to privacy and then there is a data protection policy that now speaks to the bill that has been presented so there is a draft bill that talks about data protection that if a private institution or a government institution has access to your data for that data not to be leaked or transferred to third parties so until that particular bill is passed and it's ascended to and becomes an act then some of the things that are in that bill we can't enjoy them yet however the case of huduma number I need to understand that it is not blockchain based but it is actually a safe system that the government has developed to harmonize and to to actually bring together all these multifaceted and fragmented government services we usually have so it's a one stop shop in fact they are calling it the ones of truth of citizenship if you have that number you're able to access NHIF you're able to access all other government services now I might have my reservations on that because I believe maybe there are other things we would have done to actually the issues we have the corruption or revenue allocation electoral reform the things that we could have done to do that but I think one step at a time so I'm told that so far we have 12.5 million Kenyans who have already registered it's a good front Kenyans are actually very supportive when we banned plastic bags we didn't even have complaints we took a short time for Kenyans transition Kenyans are good willed I don't know whether our leaders see that that they introduce do we have good will? Kenyans are good willed we introduce a plastic bag and people comply they've introduced names and people are registering we have 12.5 million people who've registered if that good will can be rewarded with actual good governance I think I would be happy if we can be rewarded that this can be a good platform for actually accessing government services you know then I mean these are the things that pain me and I wish our leaders would see this see that every time they come up with something good Kenyans respond very fast alright can I say something personally I'm not very enthusiastic about what they will do manamba my reasons are that I don't think it was much of priority we were just going to ascensor in the month of August that we will still spend a lot of money you know do manamba alone the government budgeted for about 6 billion to just do this and so we spending this and then we are going to spend another probably another 6 billion to just do ascensor which to me are one and the same thing to be able to do and so sometimes our priorities are not right and that is my reservation although there have been some issues that would do manamba are not protected have been hacked and then we also find that those who are providing the services were also discontinued so I don't know what happened to the data now you also remember the company what was the name of the company MD Mofo so the parliament were saying that they have terminated the contract but the access is still going on so you might not even understand what is going on exactly because if I'm providing I'm giving you the data and my services are stopped and something is still going on you don't even know what is going on I'm only faulting the moon priority for me it's not a priority I'd like to differ with my colleague because the national sensors takes more data than that personal information system is supposed to be an anchor to getting government services now the national sensors process gets way more information than just personal data from the property that you own there's so much that goes into the process that's learned so while our priorities are coming to make you wrong I believe that we are at the top of the start for once let's sell hope because we come on air every day and complain how there are bad things happening but for once let's sell hope let's sell hope okay chairman you bad there is exactly where we go wrong because if we cannot say when something is not right let me also say if I was coming to collect our information no no no no no no we are not meant to start a whole debate here selling hope yes perfect to need to sell hope I'm always concerned when we come on air and we don't localize our content when I talk about localizing our content is we're talking who do we're talking sensors but in my mind even this particular 17 goals that we talk about SDGs always look at the person within the rural area setups we're taking 6 billion in terms of implementation for dooma number the 6 billion in terms of sensors and there's one thing that I'm a believer of and that is how best can we accelerate technology to rural areas as a driver to development in that you see we're talking no poverty we're talking no zero to hunger we're talking good health and a big percentage of our Kenyan population resides on rural area setups and one of the only things they lack is information and a basic way of even accelerating information for them to be aware about justice systems on how Kenya operates is by just an example always says how best can we set up tech hub centers within the rural area setups because as I end I know yes time is up and I always give this basic example a mechanic in Nairobi who has accessed a laptop will come to diagnose a car will come to diagnose someone's car using a laptop right a mechanic in the rural area setup for example probably in Igbo will come to diagnose a car using a spanner and the only thing that lacks across the two of them is not even just education but just as in that basic access to probably digital skill or rather to just that tech hub center that will make him access information the same information that this particular person is accessing within Nairobi and that to me probably I believe is a key driver to just ensure SDGs as it localize it localize it, spread the information that is exactly why I wanted Jennifer here to tell us about to do my number because there are many people and there are many young people who also don't really know exactly how it works, me included so it was good for us to know like what's happening but anyway you guys it's about time we wind up thank you guys so much for making time to be here today and I hope next week I'll still have some of you here with me Asantisana National Youth Council thank you so much Mr. Roy Sasaki as well the CEO of the National Youth Council thank you so much for your support and yes this has been another segment of youth and politics my name is Hilda Wadibi Jennifer thank you, thank you thank you Anu, thank you everybody alright so please don't go away you're watching my in the morning to Kutani next week peace