TIGblogs - Bernard Muhia's TIGBlog

Inspiration for the youth

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:21:00 EDT

My name is Bernard Muhia. I am a 24 year old Kenyan male. I am a journalist by training but currently unemployed. Due to my unemployed status and with no sources of income, I am living with my single parent.

Over the past one year, I have been volunteering as an administrator with a professional body. As a young person, full of vitality and creativity, I have been less and less inspired at work over the last three months. There hasn’t been any challenging projects or assignments and that made me gradually withdraw from the organization. I have to say that I don’t have anything principally against the organization though.

A lot of young people’s creativity and energy is fizzled out in their mundane jobs, jobs that they can’t quit because they still have to pay the bills or are too afraid to follow their true dreams and passionate desires. The only remedy that they resort to is to constantly change jobs hoping to find one that inspires them. Since most of their managers and supervisors are over 40 years old, and believe in systems and maintaining the status quo, there is no way that these young employees can express their creative energies for the benefit of their employers. Individualism has also not been appreciated in most corporate cultures. The human resource manager stresses team building and collective responsibility and thus the quiet ones remain so, and the creative ones hold back.

The society is fragmented more than ever before as seen in the ever rising cases of divorce and extreme anti-social behaviour. When a family unit disintegrates either through divorce, separation or otherwise death of parents due to AIDS or any other causes, the children grow up traumatized. This country has inadequate resources, facilities and personnel to handle childhood trauma that is commonplace.

To make a bad situation worse, the high rate of unemployment in this country has left in its wake a generation of young people who have despaired and lost hope in ‘the system’ and also in themselves. Poverty is not a lack of or inadequacy of resources but a state of mind of resignation gotten from that external lack of or inadequacy of resources. A percentage of today’s successful people have very poor and seemingly hopeless backgrounds but it’s their state of mind that changed for them to rise above that background and come out successful.

It is this state of mind, which results from the real or perceived inadequacy of resources, the childhood trauma arising from disintegration of the family unit and lack of organizational support to express young people’s creative energies that moves me to want to run an inspirational program for the youth. My goal is to help young people to grow and develop by overcoming any emotional blocks, limiting beliefs, low self esteem and self destructive behaviours that are blocking the road to abundant success in their lives.

Being a young person, and having experienced all of the above puts me in the right position to get through to and be accepted by the youth. The youth as defined by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports are any persons over the age of 15 years but under the age of 30 years. I envision coordinating my efforts through a proposed youth center for excellence named ‘Under30.com’. The motto of the youth center for excellence will be ‘Make friends with success by following your bliss’.

To help me better understand the task that lies ahead, I am taking an approach used by universities which is writing dissertations or theses. I am preparing to write a book titled ‘Being a youth; A guide to the challenges, needs and aspirations of a youth’. I will carry out a survey among 200 young people to establish the following:

1. What challenges do you face as a young person; physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically and intellectually? (Give seven answers, one for each state, i.e. outline physical challenges, social challenges etc).

2. What are your needs in the physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, political and economic spheres? (Answer for all spheres).

3. What are your aspirations professionally, politically and socially? (Answer where applicable).

Their answers will form the basis of my book. Using the book as a guide, I will embark on the inspirational program. The program will involve screening an inspirational video program designed for the youth. The video program has been developed by Jack Canfield who is an author, motivational speaker and teacher by training. He trained at Harvard University and later at the University of Massachusetts in the U.S.A. He has also written a book titled ‘The success principles’ which will be issued to the youth benefiting from this program.

Due to the fact that this is my first time embarking on such a task, and going by the guidelines of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, I will form a linkage between the youth center for excellence and Peak Performance International. Peak Performance International is an organization that has experts in the human growth and development field. This synergy will ensure that the program is run by the youth, benefits the youth, but is mentored by experts in human growth and development. Their input will enrich the inspirational program with relevant content and the right delivery.

The program first aims to target the youth through already established structures. The first group is the youth benefiting directly through loans from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. Their number is 22,000 young people across the country as quoted by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. The second group is composed of students. These are secondary school students, university and polytechnic students across the country.

If a country’s youth are critical to the growth of the economy and to the internal security of the country, then the youth agenda should be given the attention of a national disaster. Handing out loans is the right gesture, but if the recipients are living in a state of despair and lack motivation, then the money will be of little consequence. And if students in secondary schools, universities and polytechnics continue to strike and disrupt their studies because they see the future as being bleak due to the high unemployment rate, then we have a failed education system.

I will reiterate that poverty is not a lack of or inadequacy of resources, but a state of mind of resignation gotten from the external lack or inadequacy of resources. A percentage of today’s successful people have very poor and hopeless backgrounds, but it’s their state of mind that changed, for them to rise above that background and come out successful. Our youth need inspiration to change their state of mind from despair and resignation to hope and inspiration.

Motivating our youth

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:31:00 EDT

I envision a Kenya where all young people are inspired to believe in themselves and their abilities and are empowered to reach their full potential and realize all their dreams. This is the very core of why the Government of Kenya established the Ministry of State for Youth Affairs and Sports.

Our youth are already exposed to all manner of negative programmes on television, and so providing an alternative program that has an inspirational and motivational standpoint would counter all the negativity in the media. In a bid to motivate and inspire our young people, I propose screening a motivational video program by Jack Canfield to all youth entrepreneurs who have directly benefited from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund and to students in secondary schools, polytechnics and public universities across the country. Jack Canfield is a motivational speaker, author and a teacher by training.

So many young people currently live in a state of resignation and despair. It is time to turn that around. We all have the power within us to create the life we want, the life we dream about, the life we were born to live. We all deserve to fulfill our full potential and manifest our true destiny. It is our birthright, but it must be claimed. It must be earned through hard work, and part of that hard work is first learning and then living the time-tested and ageless principles that are guaranteed to bring about our desired results.

Most of us did not learn these principles in school or at church, and only a few of us learned them at home. They have been passed down from person to person by mentors, teachers, coaches and, more recently, in books, seminars, video and audio programs. What if all youth-owned businesses used these principles that would propel them to greater success? What if all students knew these principles and put them into practice in class, on the playing field, and in their social lives? It would be a different world. The youth fund would exceed expectations by creating hugely successful young businessmen and women, and students would excel, thereby providing the world economy with a high-rated workforce.

Young people would take 100% responsibility for their lives and the results they produce or they don’t produce. They would be clear about their visions and their goals. Everyone would persevere in the face of hardship and challenge. Young men and women would band together in teams to support each other to become all that they could be.

The motivational video program will achieve all this and more. A financial services consultant, Charles Schwab once said, “ I have yet to find a man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism”.

The greatest gift you can give anyone is a gift of empowerment and love. What could be more loving than helping people you care about get free from their limiting beliefs and ignorance about success, and empowering them to create the life that they truly want from the depths of their soul?

The greatest contribution you can make to the world is to grow in self-awareness, self-realization and the power to manifest your own heartfelt dreams and desires. The next greatest thing you can do is to help others do the same. What a wonderful world it would be if we were all to do that. –Adapted from the ‘The success principles’ by Jack Canfield.

I am also in the process of writing a book titled ‘Being a youth; A guide to the challenges, needs and aspirations of a youth’. Prior to the screening of the video in every school, we will pass out a questionnaire to collect information. The questionnaire will have three questions;

1. What challenges do you face as a young person, physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically and intellectually? (Give seven answers, one for each state, i.e. outline physical challenges, social challenges etc).

2. What are your needs in the physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, political and economical spheres? (Answer for all spheres).

3. What are your aspirations professionally, politically and socially? (Answer where applicable).

This motivational program is a service to the youth of this country by the youth of this country and will be offered to them free of any charges.

The impending class war

Sat, 31 May 2008 10:30:00 EDT

THE LOOMING CLASS WAR

By Bernard Muhia

The French riots of 2007, which were a horrific representation of a class war or the recent spate of violence in South Africa, are probably where Kenya is headed. According to Dr. Sobbie Mulindi , who studied and lived in France for 15 years and is now a human behaviour specialist at the University of Nairobi, this country is on the brink of a class conflict that will surpass the post-election violence. Dr. Mulindi says “the next conflict is going to be between those who have and those who have not”.

The possible outbreak of spontaneous violence countrywide has also got the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports very worried. According to Mr. Isaac Kamande, the chief economist at the Ministry, a failure by the Coalition Government to fully and comprehensively address the problem of youth unemployment is going to be “disastrous”. His worry is that the youth will join or form new militia groups that will forcefully claim what they perceive to being taken away from them in terms of denial of opportunities. He expressly says that the youth feel denied and robbed of economic opportunities.

Kenya is ranked among the top 10 most unequal societies in the world and the most unequal in East Africa. For every One Shilling a poor Kenyan makes, a rich Kenyan makes 56 Shillings! This is according to research done by Society for International Development on economic inequality (2004). On top of that, Kenyans are among the highest taxed populations on the continent. As a result of the post-election violence, Kenya now has the second highest cost of living on the continent after Zimbabwe. It has become expensive to be proud to become Kenyan.

A class war is a friction between various groups or clusters in the class structure. There are three main classes; the upper (rich) class, the middle class (non-manual labourers) and the working class (manual labourers). A fourth class of the unemployed has developed over the decades, the underclass. Most of the youths in Kenya fall in this class which apparently has the majority compared to the first three classes. This is the class of the ‘have nots’!

With the youth between ages 15 and 30 years constituting 32% of the country’s population, it is a cause for alarm that majority of them are in the underclass in the backdrop of the high cost of living. At some point, something’s got to give and when it does, it’s going to be ugly. This group feels left out and is a disgruntled lot. The creation of the Ministry of Youth Affairs was a great leap in the right direction and substantive ground has been covered since, but that barely scratches the surface. Dr. Mulindi acknowledges that “ we have come up with so many sound policies regarding the youth and their welfare, but the problem has always been funding, implementing monitoring and evaluating them”. In fact, we have such excellent policy documents that they are edited and used by other countries while Kenyans continue to wallow in poverty and disease.

There are currently four documents that strive to address the youth unemployment problem. These are; The Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (PRSP), Sessional Paper Number 4 of 2005, Sessional Paper Number 2 of 1992 on small scale and jua kali enterprises and the Development Plan 1997-2001. The latest addition to this pile is the Youth Employment Marshal Plan (November 2007). Kenyans are also partly to blame because they do not listen to professionals nor do they use their research. We should move away from relying on politicians, who have vested interests, for direction.

As a consultant on the UN-HABITAT backed National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign, Dr. Mulindi says that the lack of employment and the feeling of despair is what push the youth to join Militias which tend to provide a sense of direction and belonging. The late American rapper, Tupac Shakur in his song ‘mama’ expresses his choice to join street gangs as not the best but says that “even though they sold drugs, they showed a young brother love”. Mr. Kamande agrees with this theory when he asserts that the feeling of being abandoned by society, betrayed by the political class, looked down upon by the financial sector and criminalized by the police force is not a good combination for a young person trying to make a living.

There is a general lack of faith in the ability and potential of the youth and this is a societal problem. Parents cannot offer their title deeds or logbooks as collateral for their youth nor are financial institutions willingly ready to lend to the youth. To add insult to injury, the police have criminalized being a youth/ being young. When the police report that majority of the criminals are youth, they also include in their statistics ‘crimes’ like walking without identity cards, loitering in the streets, being in groups of four or five and hanging on matatus! (Public Service Vehicles)
I am not a human behaviour specialist nor do I condone violence but I think all these factors contribute to why militia groups are coming up to fight ‘the system’(oppressive structures in public, private and social sectors). It’s a youth revolution that most often than not, leaves a bad taste in the society’s mouth.

One sign of the looming class war that most stakeholders did not pickup on was that most of last year’s (2007) political campaign rallies were held on working days, but were massively attended. This shows that there are so many youths who are idle and unemployed, and they pose a serious threat to the internal security of any country. Dr. Mulindi says that “we will never have peace unless we address the problems of the underclass”.

Then came the disputed elections and the result of that post-polls violence was the internally displaced people. The violence is the most serious thing that happened to Kenya’s population as a whole, since independence. The worry from different quarters is that the IDPs will not forgive the perpetrators and that their frustrations at being flung into the underclass so suddenly might push them to the battlefront of the class war. There were reports that militia groups were having a field day recruiting youths in the camps of the displaced. According to Dr. Elijah Agevi who is coordinating the National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign, analysis of the intensity of the post-election violence reveals a worrying coleration between violence, the youth and the lack of their opportunities therein. He is also concerned that a simple trigger can bring spontaneous violence that might take on a class conflict dimension.

We have a serious problem of unemployment and the ramifications of this, among the youth. As the security forces try to deal with the symptoms by shooting to kill and brutally arresting youths who just fill up our prisons, what they are essentially doing is creating hardcore criminals. Rather, addressing the root causes of the problem is a far more viable approach. The Ministry of youth has come up with a Youth Employment Marshal Plan (November 2007) which seeks to promote the successful transition of youths from school to work and thereby contribute to economic development. Most importantly, the Marshal Plan is expected to “greatly reduce the incidence of social problems as youth unemployment is essentially a time bomb”.

Dr. Mulindi who has extensively been involved in issues concerning the youth and is also the Chairperson of AFC Leopards, says that sports when used as an entry point can help fight drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, and teenage pregnancy. Football for example is a labour intensive sport and has the potential of employing over 2 Million youths directly, countrywide.

There then couldn’t have been a better gift for the youth than the merging of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The task of the new Ministry is to now make sports an economically viable option for the youth. Kenya is in the world headlines every week thanks to athletics, so the new Ministry should view developing athletics vigorously countrywide as a priority. We can have town marathons in almost every town in the country and invite local and international sponsors. There is already a vote of confidence in Kenyan sports following the airing of the Kenya Premier League on a paid TV network.

I may not have all the answers to this quandary nor have I comprehensively expressed the views and frustrations of the youth despite being one of them. And so I propose further research into the looming class war, so that we can better understand it and hopefully help our youth break out of the cycle. The research will involve a countrywide survey to collect views, opinions and recommendations from youth respondents and other relevant stakeholders on how we can address this problem. The research will yield a report that will be presented to the Government of Kenya for it to take action immediately and expeditiously to avert the worst case scenario of a class war.

Story by Bernard Muhia. The writer is a member of the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers (KAPIDE). He can be reached on bernardmuhia2000@gmail.com

Post Election Violence Trauma Counseling for Journalists

Fri, 09 May 2008 03:43:00 EDT

Background

Covering a violent conflict can create serious health problems for journalists and photographers who often find themselves in the frontline of the events to get the images and the stories. Thus, they often experience or witness traumatizing incidents and many of them will struggle to cope with the impact.
In the unprecedented wave of politically motivated violence that was triggered after the disputed December 27 presidential election, Kenyan media practitioners found themselves at the heart of the events and witnessed firsthand gross abuses of human rights – more than 1,000 Kenyans have been killed and over 500,000 have been displaced by the crisis. Such disturbing images can take a toll on any human being irrespective of the community they come from.
The gruesome images may haunt them for the rest of their lives and may threaten their mental well-being if the problem is not adequately addressed through trauma counseling sessions. Evidence gathered and symptoms reported among Kenyan media practitioners have ranged from anxiety and depression to emotional numbness and substance abuse. The fact that the post traumatic stress is threatening the sanity of the workplace in several media houses is another cause for alarm.

Recommendations

Providing counseling for reporters having witnessed some of the worst things that can happen to humanity with no equipment to protect themselves and no tools to handle the emotional shock was identified as one of the most imminent and crucial needs for support to Kenyan media practitioners.

According to the Nairobi Round Table Recommendations (February 2008), which identify the challenges that media practitioners and media houses have been facing prior to, during and after the December 27 2007, Presidential Election, “journalists and media practitioners are traumatized but are lacking counseling to deal with the post violence trauma and the self denial.”

Post-Election Trauma Counseling

The Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers (KAPIDE) has been carrying out the post-election trauma counseling sessions in close cooperation with the Kenya Correspondents Association and the Kenya Union of Journalists. The counseling sessions have already taken place in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kisumu. The Mombasa session kicks off tomorrow(10th-11th May)

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Economic inequality- The class war

Wed, 07 May 2008 07:47:00 EDT

Economic inequality: The looming class war.

By Bernard Muhia

The French riots of 2007, which were a horrific representation of a class war, are probably where Kenya is headed. According to Dr. Sobbie Mulindi, who studied and lived in France for 15 years and is now a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, this country is on the brink of a class conflict that will surpass the post-election violence. “The next conflict is going to be between those who have and those who have not”. Says Dr Mulindi.

Kenya is ranked among the countries with the widest chasm between the rich and the poor. On top of that, Kenyans are among the highest taxed populations on the continent and, as a result of the post-election violence, Kenya now has the second highest cost of living on the continent after Zimbabwe. It has become expensive to be proud of being Kenyan.

A class war is a friction between various groups or clusters in the class structure. There are three main classes; the upper (rich) class, the middle class (non-manual labourers), and the working class (manual labourers). A fourth class of the unemployed has developed over the decades, the underclass. Most of the youths in Kenya fall in this class which apparently has the majority compared to the first three classes. This is the class of the ‘have nots’!

With the youth constituting 60% of the country’s population, it is a cause for alarm that majority of them are in the underclass in the backdrop of the high cost of living. At some point, something’s got to give and when it does, it’s going to be ugly. This group feels left out and is a disgruntled lot. The creation of the Ministry of Youth was a great leap in the right direction and substantive ground has been covered since, but that barely scratches the surface. “We have come up with so many sound policies regarding the youth and their welfare, but the problem has always been funding, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating them”. Says Dr. Mulindi. In fact, we have such excellent policy documents that they are edited and used by other countries while Kenyans continue to wallow in poverty and disease. Kenyans do not listen to professionals, nor do they use their research. We should move away from relying on politicians, who have vested interests, for direction.

Dr. Mulindi who is also the national consultant on the UN-HABITAT backed National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign says that the lack of employment and the feeling of despair is what push the youth to join militias which tend to provide a sense of direction and belonging. In his song ‘mama’, the late American rapper Tupac Shakur expresses his choice to join street gangs as not wise but says “even though they sold drugs, they showed a young brother love”.

One sign of the looming class war that most stakeholders did not notice was that most of last year’s (2007) political campaign rallies were held on working days, but were massively attended. This shows that there are so many youths who are idle and unemployed, and they pose a serious threat to the internal security of any country. Dr. Mulindi asserts that “we will never have peace in this country unless we address the problems of the underclass”.

Then came the disputed elections and the result of that post-polls violence was the internally displaced people. The violence is the most serious thing that has happened to Kenya’s population as a whole, since independence. The worry from different quarters is that the IDP’s will not forgive the perpetuators, that their frustrations at being flung into the underclass so suddenly might push them to the battlefront of the class war. There have been reports that militias are having a field day recruiting youths in camps of the displaced.

We have a serious problem of unemployment and the ramification of this, among the youth. As the security forces try to deal with the symptoms by brutally arresting youths and filling up our prisons, what they are essentially doing is creating hardcore criminals. Rather, addressing the root causes of the problem is a far more viable approach.

Dr Mulindi, who has extensively been involved in issues concerning the youth and is the chairperson of AFC Leopards, says that sports when used as an entry point can help fight drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, and teenage pregnancies. Football for example is a labour intensive sport and has the potential of employing over 2 Million youths directly, countrywide.

There couldn’t have been a better gift for the youth than the merging of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Kenya is in the world headlines every week thanks to athletics, so the new ministry should view developing athletics vigorously countrywide as a good recommendation. We can have town marathons in almost every town in the country and invite local and international sponsors. There is already a vote of confidence in Kenyan sports following the airing of the Kenya Premier League on a paid TV network.

I may not have all the answers to this quandary and so I propose further research into economic inequality and the looming class war, so that we can better understand it and hopefully help our youth break out of the cycle.

Story by Bernard Muhia. The writer is a member of the Kenya Correspondents Association and Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers. He can be reached on bernardmuhia2000@gmail.com