Nicofeli Youth Club Profile

BRIEF BACKGROUND OF THE CLUB

Nicofeli Youth Club’s present programmes were shaped by a planning process undertaken in 2008 immediately after the post-poll skirmishes, documented in the plan and budget 2008-2010. Although a two year perspective was taken, objectives were set to a one-year time frame ending July, 2009, and financial requests were likewise limited to one year. Nicofeli Youth Club is a Community Based Organization (CBO), duly registered by the Government of Kenya.

The club started in the year 2007, but became active the year 2008, immediately after post poll skirmishes, and so far has enrolled about 200 youth on board. The club’s motto is “Promoting Youth’s Talents Through Access to Youth’s Right to Extracurricular Activities.” But access to these activities are limited by weakness in the system, e.g. insufficient personnel unevenly distributed, with the poor getting nearly 1%, if any; affordable facilities; complexity of procedures; remoteness of professional personnel and socioeconomic characteristics of the population, e.g. low functional literacy levels, ignorance of rights, and of course poverty itself. Furthermore, the education, cultural, gender and social systems tend to be perceived by the ordinary youth as an instrument of state authority, oppressive, complicated, slow and remote.

AIM: Based on such analysis the club’s main aim is to promote youth’s talent through access to extracurricular activities, through community empowerment. Community empowerment is to be pursued through the following programmes:

1. Reading culture: promotion of youth literacy and reading culture through availing of reading books, achieved through lending of reading materials.
2. Arts: Administering arts classes, both creative and other forms of arts, with the youth.
3. Sports: training the youth on various sporting activities.
4. ICT: establishing an ICT centre where the youth are trained on information and communication technology.
5. Social work: engage the youth in campaigns in environmental cleaning, peace building and health awareness e.g. HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc.
6. Feeding: a weekly feeding day for the youth in which they are trained on nutrition.

GOAL: To maximize the full potential of the youth through promoting their talent as well as participatory engagements that serves their needs and aspirations in building a better community.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

1. To initiate development projects for the youth through income generation, activities and entrepreneurial training.
2. To empower youth to properly manage their health.
3. To increase participation and interaction of youth in community through sports and recreational activities.
4. To uphold gender equity and equality among the youth in all sectors of development.
5. To promote life skills, livelihood skills and social responsibility among youth.
6. To educate the youth on the dangers of drug abuse and crime as away of reducing the rates of drug abuse and crime.
7. To use creative art as art-based medium, i.e. film, theatre, printing or dance, to promote and/or create awareness on issues affecting youth and their role in community development as a means of building intergenerational and inter-ethnic bridges and alliances.
8. To promote active non-violent approaches for civic engagement through building skills for early warning systems, alternative means to resolution, mediation advocacy and lobbying towards community empowerment.
9. To promote leadership skills development through practical skill building interaction with community based and national leaders, mentoring programs, inter-ethnic and cross-cultural process.
10. To promote and harness Kenyans cultural and ethnic diversity through training/education for a community level dialogue (between youth peers and intergenerational); cultural exhibitions as a means of promoting inter-ethnic dialogue, respect for diversity, tolerance and acceptance.
11. To clearly and specifically demonstrate working partnership with other nonprofit organizations, government and/or donor agencies part and /or present.


CURRENT ACTIVITIES/ ACHIEVEMENTS

The clubs current activities include:

1. Library: stocked with books for both the young and adult literacy. Books on fictions, stories, religious, arts, true stories, self-help, environmental issues, commercial management, kindergarten literature, etc. A shipment of nearly 1,000 books is expected to St. George Orthodox Church by end of 2008.
2. Arts: arts classes for the children are administered in partnership with the M2 arts collective.
3. Sports: Sports training for both the young and older youth are on. The club has so far received remarkable support from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MOYAS) towards this, of which the club has signed partnership agreement with. Sporting activities include football, karate, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, and all manner of health body building activities.
4. Social work: The club is authorized and licensed by City Council of Nairobi (CCN) to collect garbage within Sarang’ombe ward. Langata constituency; has in partnership with MOYAS planted trees in three institutions, namely Olympic Primary School, Kenya Assembly of God-Olympic, and St. George Orthodox Church-Kianda; held workshops and campaigns on peace building and HIV/AIDS with support from St. George Orthodox church and Nation Media Group; held workshops on environmental matters, in partnership with MOYAS and CCN; these social activities are actively going on.
5. Feeding: there is a weekly feeding schedule every Saturday in which the youth on board the club are fed and their guardians conducted on nutrition tips.


CHALLENGES

The club’s challenges are:

1. Funds: This is the club’s main challenge. As can be noted, the programmes that the club had set to develop are not operating as per the target, and some have not taken off due to financial constraints.
2. Outreach: Reaching out to the youth and influencing them to get on board the club has also been an observable challenge, especially due to socioeconomic characteristics of the community population.
3. Security: The club is established within a community with a very fragile security system, with the youth taking the lead in engaging in criminal acts, hence at times making operation unsafe.
4. Lack of space: The community around, being the largest slum in the country, is highly congested that there is not enough space to implement the club’s programme, especially outdoor sports.
5. Ethnicity: The community around has a diverse ethnic background with a deep rooted ethnic hatred, special among the older folk. This makes even a challenge for the club to influence parents thinking toward becoming members of the club or their kids getting on board, especially if they feel it does not belong to the group. (Refer to our mission.)
6. Negative attitude: General negative attitude toward development projects especially due to the current situation where people are overburdened by the excessive high cost of living, making survival nearly impossible. So people tend to have a general negative attitude toward this kind of project as they feel it is not a basic necessity, etc.

COLLABORATORS

The club’s current collaborators/affiliates are:

1. “Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports” (MOYAS)
2. “City Council of Nairobi” (CCN)
3. “Church and Religious organizations” various
4. “Art Within reason” contemporary art gallery, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
5. “M2 Arts crew”
6. Sought collaboration/affiliates with “World Vision”.
7. Sought collaboration with “Kenya Community Development Foundation” (KCDF).
8. Sought collaboration/affiliate with “Green Belt Movement” and is willing to collaborate with other similar organization.

LOCATION
The club is located at St. George Orthodox Church - Kibera Parish, along Kibera Drive off Ngong Road and having its postal address at General Post Office (G.P.O) Postal Box 17212-code: 00100, Kenyatta Avenue, City centre-Nairobi-Kenya.

VISION
The club’s vision is to establish a youth empowerment/resource centre within its area of operation to address the diverse needs of the youth that have for a long time been neglected by development activities provided by various organizations/government.

MISSION
To implement a proper structure staffed with qualified team of personnel, and if need be, working around the clock to ensure that the club’s programmes/ activities are accessible, acceptable, contextually appropriate, affordable and available in terms of club’s objectives and service provision enhanced, effective and congruent with the national guidelines for the provision of youth friendly service. To address most of the challenges affecting the youth while providing a forum for them to interact and discuss these challenge as peers. To achieve club’s objectives through integration of services that will include a diversity of activities ranging from entrepreneurship training, information provision, counseling, games, community mobilization and sensitization and networking as well as act as spring-board for reaching the wider communities in implementing youth-friendly projects.