NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 28 – Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka has called on Kenyans to invest in the youth character formation to equip young people with positive skills that would help them to effectively deal with life challenges.
Mr Musyoka said on Saturday that young persons are vulnerable to life challenges thus the need to help them adopt positive attitudes that would enable them to think and behave constructively and relate well with others.
“Young people are faced with many challenges from unemployment, poverty, drugs and HIV/Aids to peer pressure and negative influence by the media. They need to be guided to enable them improve their decision making skills and ability to comprehend things correctly,” the VP added.
Speaking during the launch of a life skills programme, the VP pointed out that these skills would also improve their ability to handle issues responsibly, which would in turn provide them with opportunities to develop and participate actively in nation building.
The programme, which is an initiative of the Scripture Union of Kenya, gives opportunity to the youth to participate in conflict prevention and peace building and thus lay a firm foundation for a just and peaceful society.
Mr Musyoka said the launch of the programme was timely as it was coming at a time when Kenyans were trying to reconcile and live peacefully after the violence that rocked the country following the announcement of the 2007 president election results.
He lauded the youth organisation for launching it in the greater Nairobi, South Rift, North Rift and Lake Regions that were adversely affected by the post election conflict.
“It is encouraging that the program aims at addressing some behavioural undercurrents that make the youth to be easily manipulated, by empowering them to adopt positive attitudes in life,” he said, while observing that most of the violent acts during that sad period were carried out by the youth.
The Vice President appealed to religious leaders, civil society, educationists, political leaders, parents and other well-wishers to support the initiative and other similar plans, and the same time asked young people to reject being used by politicians to advance their personal agenda.
The life skills programme has already been implemented in 566 primary and secondary schools. But although it is in the schools’ curriculum, it is not examinable.
The Union’s National Chairman Samuel Chepkonga said plans were underway to introduce the programme in the Coast, Eastern and Central regions of the country and added that they intended to train 1,132 teachers as leaders and facilitators of the programme.
“The scripture union has just finalised a programme that targeted 1,000 identified teachers who will run awareness and counselling clubs in primary schools across the country,” Mr Chepkonga relayed.
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