 Why 254, imagine? One of them is being fought and I'm speaking in regards to what happens to Kirinaga Governor. And some of the people are saying she's being fought because she's a woman. And now we have hosting plans by members, all the MCs of Kituidia planning to host Osta Cheritingilu. What do you make of all these events politically? Okay, thank you for having me. I'd like to say that the Waiguru impeachment that was done recently by the MCs is not really because she's a woman. I don't think it's about the gender that really matters here. Honorable Waiguru was elected by Kirinaga people and the MCs in Kirinaga are the voices that represent the voices of the people. So if the MCs felt that there's a gap somewhere in her leadership, there's some questions to be answered, that's why they did the process of impeachment. And what we need to now understand is we hope that the Senate coming, as we wait for the report from the Senate, we hope that it will be purely objective and nothing political attached. Because if you look at how the Senate was going about with the, whether to go this plenary or the committee way, it just shows that there's a way, there's lack of independence in the Senate. Because if you look at the ones, the people wanted plenary in Waiguru's case, they wanted different things for Waiguru's case. So it just shows that everything changes according to the politics of the time, the political temperature at the moment. And we just hope that going forward that Waiguru is given a chance to defend herself. We have the structures like ESC, GCI. They need to maybe probe into the matter so that the Kirinaga people and Kenyans are able to know if really there was an abuse of office and gross misconduct. But for now as I speak, I just want to say that we need to wait to see if the Senate is going to do the right thing. But talking about being targeted as a woman, I don't think that's true because right now she holds the office of the governor. She is a leader. She's not looked at as a woman. So she's a leader and if you saw why it went through impeachment and like any other governor, she's capable of going through the same. So I don't think it's about the gender that should be played right now. And if you look at now Honorable Ngelu almost being hosted, we just hope, I just hope as a young person that all these are not political, are not tied to settling political and personal scores. Because in the house recently when the senior senator James Sorango he just said and declared on the floor that there's someone that is behind Waiguru, Waiguru's impeachment. So if an experienced leader, someone we trust and has been there in the Senate for some time now, if he's able to speak that then you know as Kenyans we also have questions. We also have to question is there what political games are being played. So that's the worry of Kenyans. Is it a genuine impeachment or is it just settling political scores? Speaking of settling political scores, in the recent days we have been seeing the cleanup of the Jubilee House and maybe if we could be having that particular image of the persons who are holding now the higher office or the bigger offices in the country, they are all male. We do not have women if we could look from the speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate, we have both male. Coming down we do not have any women. Would you say the woman has been undermined and for a long time the Kenyan parliament or the Kenyan House has been calling for that role and the women would not stand up and now they are not into picture. What do you make of the recent events? Now when I look at this picture it's just an illustration of the fact that we still do not fact agenda when making decisions and that's so unfortunate because in this era in time we expect because we have women leaders of proven to have a track record of good leadership. It's just unfortunate that we can't have great positions for them also in the party. You see now it's about we still have existing particular structures in our politics. That's why as much as the women were doing well and we are getting more of them into their politics there's still gaps, we still have blocks. We still have blocks especially in leadership positions and party levels and as you know in Kenya political parties is central in politics. So if you can't have women having leadership roles, this one is for Jubilee and it's the major party right now in Kenya. If it does not, it cannot factor women into leadership yet we have very powerful women. Those are very vocal and working hard in the parties. I think it's just about the patriarchy that still exists within the systems and it's not, it's the patriarchy, what we need to do is just we need to also create our safe spaces for women leaders to create those systems to be able to combat the patriarchal systems. That's the only way. Otherwise if you continue maybe just tolerating the whole system then I don't think it will favor us and you know in politics women leaders have to stand for themselves. They have to prove themselves always and right now if we see this what's happening it just means that we still have not taken it seriously. The ability, the capability, the strength of women leaders in this country. This just an example. In the recent cases I've seen webinars where we have just men in the panel. We call them money list. And we were discussing this recently with some friends and they were like a whole ministry. Can't they find women who are in the ministry? Those who are in the sector. They can't miss to find a woman in the sector. So it just means that the society still does not embrace women leadership to its core, the way it should. And this will take some time because patriarchy is something that exists in all levels from the grassroots to the top levels. So I think it's not something that it's going to be fought tomorrow or in the near future but consistently when as women leaders they have to stand up for themselves they have to keep on fighting so that their voices may be heard. But it's just an unfortunate thing that at this era we still can't, we are still closing our eyes to the reality of women leadership. You spoke of learning yourself and putting yourself available for leadership and here brings me to the point of young women connect. You are the chair, how did the dream come about and maybe you could tell us about the journey? Okay, it was co-founded by a also friend, Cleongati. She was the former education minister for MKU. I was in the women students body UN and when we finished campers last year we realized there's a gap for young women especially those who are formerly campers leaders because most of them we envision to join national leadership because leadership does not stop at campers. So while we want to do that, there's normally a gap between the campers leadership and also the national leadership. So we thought that we have the strength, we have the capabilities, we have the skills. So what if we just come together and be able to nurture each other and be able to find mentors because in leadership it's all about mentorship and in current world you can't thrive if you work alone. They say if you work alone you can go far but if we work together we can go farthest. So we thought that it will be ideal to be able to come together and bring the skills and knowledge we have and then be able to nurture the young women in leadership. That's why one of our major programs is women lead forum and what we do is we bring those who are experienced in leadership we have many women leaders who are doing great so we bring them to the young people themselves and they are able to share the experiences they are able to share the skills and in that way when we have the right mentorship then we are nurturing the next generation of women leaders because if you look at the current women leaders we have most of them are, let me say, the age, they are a bit old and we can't expect them to be represented as for long so we need to start nurturing the crop of new leaders right now so that's why we came up with Young Women Leaders Connect and maybe the name we have, we also have men it's just not limited to women I think because of the name people confuse it with women we have men who believe in our vision but our main vision is to see young people who participate in decision making tables Now you mentioned leadership in the national level and I'm sure in this country if you have been keen we have so many women being in the leadership position in the corporate world are your programs tailored towards national leadership like politics or even in the corporate sector Now leadership is all rounded leadership is not just about politics in our programs we also take up teen pregnancy as one of our issue because we realized that if you want to empower women the young girls one of the major issues that affect their education is teen pregnancy and you've seen the recent statistics in the country so we took it as the major social issue that we want to handle and when we do that when you call ourselves leaders it's an all rounded thing we respond to society's pressing issues like the teen pregnancy we also talk about peace and security we've been involved in conversations around that and also leadership the women leadership now you find that we can't limit ourselves to politics only because some members you'll find someone is good in sexual productive health someone is very good in entrepreneurship someone is good in corporate someone is good in politics so what we do normally in our programs we try to blend in different topics but all of them under leadership because at the end of the day whatever field you are good at we still want to see you being a leader in that field we have very able women in our group and most of them will be vying for the 2022 elections and we want to work with them we want to bring more members on boards mentors to work with them because we believe if we do it together all young women who believe themselves as leaders then we'll be able to come out as a next generation of very powerful young women if I could have the question who is your biggest mentor is it not that you have spoken of you have all the programs that you will cater for every kind of leadership who do you believe or who do you have seen for that time you have been in operation who is your biggest mentor are they the politicians yeah it's a mixture yeah we have our first forum we had Honorable Miliu Diambu she was the guest speaker and she was able to have two hostas a half a day and within that time we were able to get the sense of the feeling of politics from the start because she started as a nominated MP so we wanted to get the feeling how did she start because normally the problem is starting and when you get there I think it's so easy to get you to maneuver your ways but when we got her as a mentor she was able to maybe lead us into how to start how to position yourself in leadership in political leadership then the next forum we had Miss Betia Deira the Miss President she was also there and for her she talked about general leadership including corporate we didn't limit ourselves to politics because as I said it's not just about politics and we also have many young women that maybe we look up to they may not be in politics but we look up to them we have Nafulaki Siangani we have Ruth Bolo so many of them they normally come and they're able to share the wisdom they have because they have the experience than ourselves What would you say are some of the challenges that you're facing in your quest to learn about leadership and becoming better leaders than we have? Okay I want to acknowledge that so far so good we are thriving because we have women leaders who are ready to support the others, the upcoming ones and maybe the challenge I would say is being able to being able to to increase the scope because our main goal is not just to limit ourselves in the town, in the city we wish that someday maybe we will take the discussion to the grassroots to our villages and have also young people be able to be talked to at that level so the main challenge right now is getting the resources to be able to expand the program but on part of support we are glad that we have a very good support from women leaders Are men supporting you as well? Ya, we have men in our group we have men who have worked with us in fact we normally don't limit men to activities most of them maybe you won't see them on these forums but behind the scenes let me say behind the scenes we have men who support us we have someone who took who takes care of our let me say the general communication he does for us maybe designs the communication part of it we have another one who also helps in advocacy maybe I want to mention all of them but just to be sure that we have very able men who are supporting us because they believe in the mission and vision of our group and to this end do you believe the woman in this country is being given a chance to be what they can? Okay, about get opportunities for me I believe whether you are a man or a woman it's about creating the opportunities for yourself I think even as much as we have women in leadership we won't just sit down and say we are now okay we are waiting for them to come looking for us so it's about just stepping out out of the comfort zone going for it so there is chance for everyone so long as you try to position yourself try to find the opportunity and we always have enough opportunities for everyone whether you are a man or a woman there was a narrative going on during the reggae shows I'm speaking about the BBI we had narratives where some of the women would say if the governor is a male deputy should be a female and there was a question why can't you go for the female being the governor you be elected don't just write do you think what the allegations or the assumption of if this is this way then the other way we could be having this what do you think should be happening I think what was said it wasn't really about if a male it was about a male if a male is a governor then the deputy is a female and vice versa there is that part of vice versa because right now we can't we have female governors and if you look at the progression of women leadership in Kenya you will see that the more years go by the more we get more and more opportunities and more slots so it's just something it's not, it won't be a shock to see more women in governorship in the governor position so you find that that's why they made it so clear if the female would be the governor then the deputy would be the male so it's not one way it's a two way thing because in the near future we will be having in fact the two third general the man will be the ones fighting for it but the women have not been voting for it it has been in parliament for the longest time and the male MPs were there to vote for eight years but the women would not come so you say you are your own enemy no no no I don't think we had women they really did a good work when we were championing for the two third gender bill I can't say that women leaders did not come or were not supporting I didn't see that in fact during the fight for two third gender rule it just demonstrated how women leaders can really work together beyond political parties and if you look at the way they were to maybe advocate for it yeah it's not I don't think there was a group that opposed it a woman leader who opposed it two third gender rule and it's a good thing that men were also in tools in fact it was introduced to the house by Honore Buldwale so it is just a demonstration that it's not about gender is not about women gender is about both men and women so about support of course that's just a false notion that is being created by let me call them stereotypes or whatever but it's not to we have women leaders they normally come together when it comes to championing for what's right for women leaders because one thing for sure in leadership women always have to to stand up for themselves if they never do that our equality will be a forgotten word in our vocabulary alright thank you Wendy for coming do you like share your final thoughts in regards to women in power and of course leadership your final words oh my final words is if you look at the history of this country from the time we got independence to right now you will see there's a progression in women in leadership just shows that there's always there's a bright future in women leadership but now the main challenge is the society still has a problem is the society that still brings us back the patriarch is still exist and it's the systems are still patriarchal and once till the day maybe the society will be able to open their eyes to be able to realize that there is potential in women leadership then I think that's the day we'll be able to now talk about equality making equal share in decision making tables but as we speak the fight is still on and women leaders have a major responsibilities to the country and to themselves alright thank you so much for coming and shedding light and of course bringing your whole opinion in regards to women and power back home thank you so much for keeping us company she's been my guest Wendy Aura chair of the young women leadership connect I'll be seeing you again next week on a Monday until then be safe wash your hands sanitize and stay home come out here if you must I'll be leaving you in the safe hands of Ken Relbis and DJ Cheska on why Mashuriki my name is Dareva Hilawee this has been the day brief goodbye