 Thank you for staying with us on Y254 Updates and tonight if you're just joining us we're talking about justice for children and that's been a campaign that has been going on on social media that is hashtag justice for every child. We have Wendy Aura, I just hosted Wendy on Monday about Youth Week and she's here today because she's a leader in this campaign. She's a director of Young Women Leaders Connect and she's also a youth leader to help us understand what is a campaign all about to be part of this conversation by sharing your views and comments on our social media platforms. That is at Y254 channel you can also reach me at Patricia Ahumaryoki. Thank you Wendy and because time is not really on our side I would like us to look at very four important things or four key things on this. Let us start with give us a brief introduction or something brief on what this campaign is all about that is hashtag justice for every child. Thank you Patricia for hosting me. About the campaign we have a hashtag justice for every child on social media and we have justice for every child Kenya. One for Kenya is part of a global campaign that is inspired by the global justice for every child campaign and you find that it's underway in more than 60 countries worldwide. So as Kenya we felt that we have more tangible issues that need to be felt, that need to be addressed as young people. So what we did is we came together as youth focused organizations and we want to add our voices to this to be able to advocate for the rights of marginalized children. So you find that one in every five children they live under our dollar a day. They live on one or less than our dollar. So we find that especially during the pandemic the effects have hit hard on the marginalized groups. So we find that as young people we need to come together and be able to advocate for enough allocation of resources to the marginalized group. Okay. When we talk about challenges that are faced by children we know there are quite a lot of them. There is quite a number but let us talk about probably mention or talk to us tonight about probably three. What are some of the major challenges that you are addressing that you seek to address with this campaign? So the campaign focuses on four issues. The first one is accountability of resources that have been allocated for COVID response. And also we have education, we have sexual gender based violence and police brutality. You find that these issues they have come out strongly especially during the pandemic. So for example on accountability we've had donors trickling money into the country. We have the world bank we just donated $1.6 billion for the COVID response. They've also added the $2.60 billion for fiscal to just boost the fiscal economy. So we find that all this money even though from the world bank the Africa Development Bank we need as a Kenyan and as a young person we need to know how the money is being used. If we had this simulation packages the social simulator packages we need to know how far are they with them and is the money being utilized to the latter because we had issues of corruption before in this country. But COVID-19 is a very serious issue and we can't imagine maybe any leader taking it lightly by maybe the money being used the wrong way. So we've come together to be able to address the issue of accountability. We need to have accessible information on how the money is being used and how they intend to use them. So the other one is about education. We've seen right now in Kenya the schools have been closed to January. You can imagine how the academic year has been affected. You can imagine what the children and young people are going through during the pandemic. So also you've also seen we are starting to embrace the online learning. So you find that not everyone in Kenya is able to afford the online learning. So it has expanded the digital ability to access the resources. So what we need from the government is to be able to address the issue of digital divide because at the end of the day all children are important, all young people are important and education matters. So we need to find a way of how we are going to make the resources and opportunities accessible to all children. And on the same note the issue that came up strongly was teen pregnancy because it's something that has risen so much since the march. So we find that it's going to affect many girls who will be gone back to school. So we need, as young people, we've come together and we want to recommend to be able to say that how are you going to handle the situation because when we're in January how many girls are going back to school, how many girls are going back pregnant, you see. So when you come back together and want to address these issues we're able to talk about them, give way forward and be able to refine the policies that exist already. And let me just mention the others, we have sexual gender based violence which has also increased tremendously during the pandemic and we want the government to be able to put up safety houses and those that are well managed and those that are run by the government because this one issue that we need to talk about and the other one is police brutality you've seen when they were enforcing the law of curfew. You know Kenya is not used to curfew as before. So when they are trying to enforce it, when you talk about police brutality the major targets and the major victims has been young people. Okay, you've talked about all those and as we talk about waiting probably like when you talk about teenage pregnancy and we talk about coming January how many girls are we going to have back in our schools or when you talk about students being at home right now because all these two things have affected a children or teenagers that is people below the age of 18 who are still minus it under the care of their parents what is the campaign doing actively as you seek to make sure that they are long term solutions what are you doing now as we go through the pandemic what are some of the strategies that you've put up to help such people to make sure that no more teenage pregnancies even if it means that we don't get to open schools in January or as if the students don't have to go back what are you doing as of now without talking about two months or three months down the line Okay, we have a call for action and our strategy is the main one has been online which we've done for now this is the fourth week so every week we've had an online campaign which we do, we've had webinars, we've had Twitter chats we've had Facebook Live so first of all we just need the society to know about what you are really doing and to bring more people on board so and when we are done with the fourth week the fourth week is talking about police brutality right now so when we will be done with it we will be able to write a joint statement which has the key demands by the young people and when we are doing this we are targeting the police police people the decision making people and we want them to be accountable and to be able to commit to the recommendations they are making as young people so you will be seeing as, especially from next week you will be seeing as trying to call out the decision making people to be able to address these issues to the call Okay before we wind up we will not do justice to this topic without having to ask what do you expect as people lead in this campaign what do you expect from different institutions let's talk of government let's talk of the church, the society what roles do you think that each institution among the three that I have mentioned what can they bring on the table because I believe you cannot do this all by yourself you need the support of these three main stakeholders what do you think? Ya as I've said in our statement we are going to make it very clear that we have roles that the government needs to take up seriously in fact the reason we are doing this because these are issues that have been there but now they have increased because of the pandemic and we are coming to amplify the voice of young people so that it reach the government it reach the church, it reach the society because you find that when you talk for example about getting justice for the teen mothers who may be the perpetrator of old people old men so when you talk about justice government has all the tools and resources to be able to facilitate easy and out time bound justice so what we want to do is to be able to to give the government recommendations of what they need to do and if the policies that exist especially maybe on police brutality we need the government to come in and implement them and make them more serious and this commitment is going to be serious because they will be accountable for what they commit to so we will have a follow up and be able to answer to the society and the young people we represent okay your last remarks as we wind up on this topic I would like you to talk about education education is one of the things that you seek to address we know that this free primary education but we still have issues of children who cannot assess education and we cannot now put this on the government because they have offered us free primary education and we also have I think secretary school there is amount of money that is paid by the government which has made it easy for parents so what is your opinion on children who are at home who still cannot assess education what is your message to a mother to a father watching us tonight and they have not taken the obligation to make sure that their children get education now education is a right in the first place we need to know that it's a right and every parent who is not going to allow the kid to go to school is supposed to be in jail as we speak so as a young person and I know the value and the worth of education to any young person so I just want to maybe encourage any parent any young person who is out there that we need to take education seriously and being a serious issue and something that is the future of this society that's why we are calling upon the seriousness and activeness of the government or all stakeholders that is involved and about the digital divide it's something that it's a big issue because right now we are going to we have to embrace the digital era right now education is going online so what we need the government to do is be able to provide the facilities if they are talking about the laptops how have they gone with the laptops how much was allocated for the laptops how are we going to talk about the network in the remote areas because at the end of the day a child is able to afford and the child who is very poor all of them need education and the same platform all of them need to access their resources so we are talking about being able to provide a solution that is going to bring all of them together on the same platform two seconds if I want to be part of this campaign social media pages we actually have different organizations when we are doing the online for example this week we have a Twitter chat that will be led by Treadless Youth so if you want to join the campaign feel free to do that we have a consortium of partners talk to any youth organization and they will be able to show you how you can join it but meanwhile when the graphics the posters are out when we will be talking about when how to join and when make sure to join and share ok thank you Wendi for finding the time to be with us tonight and if you watched us you know that every child really needs to be in an environment where everything is favorable for them so make sure that you follow up on pages that Wendy has given be part of these letters make sure that our children have access to everything that he is of right to them thank you for joining us my name is Patricia Morioki 2 of yourselves a very good night