The National and County governments have been urged to complement efforts by non-governmental organizations to uplift the welfare of men and boys.
According to Pastor Alice Theuri, the founder of Orphan Reach Network, a non-governmental organization that supports orphans and rehabilitates street children in Nyeri County, the many years of affirmative action in favor of girls has resulted in unbalanced youth with girls benefiting but boys being left behind.
While acknowledging the critical role that men play in society, Pastor Theuri is now calling on both levels of government to collectively work to bridge this societal imbalance by supporting causes that ensure that both boys and girls are accorded equal opportunities.
‘We want to call upon the National and County governments to assist in the empowerment of the boy child. We should love the boy child because it is our responsibility as a county to come out and support these children,’ she said.
She was speaking during the launch of a boys’ empowerment f
orum in Nyeri town on Saturday where eight teenage boys from needy backgrounds were selected to join the programme. The beneficiaries will receive counseling and life skills mentorship sessions during school holidays. They were also issued with school fees cheques to cater for the 2024 term one school fees with the organization pledging to further support them by catering for their first term shopping money.
‘We want to walk with the boy child and if we can, we want to pull even one boy to change the life of our community,’ she said.
One of the beneficiaries, David Ndung’u could not hide his joy after joining the programme. Ndung’u, who is an orphan, told KNA that through the program he was now assured of finding a mentor in addition to getting financial support to help him complete his secondary school education.
‘I am very grateful because my family was not in a position to support me to complete my education. I am also happy because I have found a new family and when I become successful I will join the
organization and give back to society,’ he said.
Source: Kenya News Agency
The Oshikoto regional council spokesperson Petrus Nehale said they are planning to improve the livelihood of small and medium enterprise (SME) owners by teaching them business management and other skills.
Nehale in an interview with Nampa on Friday said that as part of their annual work plan, they conducted a two-day free training for small and medium rural business owners to equip them with skills and expertise to thrive in their business ventures.
‘We embarked on training SMEs in far remote areas of the region on the aspect of basic business management,’ Nehale said.
He said that the SMEs were identified from the Eengodi, Okankolo, and Nehale Lyampingana constituency offices and they benefited indirectly or directly from their relevant stakeholders such as the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare and Rural Development Committee (RDC).
‘We are targeting these people during this exercise and training them on business registration, on how to come up with a business proposal,
bookkeeping, and all other areas that they are lacking as we have engaged them before,’ said Nehale.
He said they came up with those modules to train them during the week of 23 to 24 November 2023 in the respective constituencies.
‘Our team has been on the ground to train these SMEs in Eengodi, Okankolo, and Nehale Lyampingana constituencies, we trained a total of 30 SMEs this year and we do this exercise every year,’ said Nehale.
He said the main aim is to capacitate their SMEs in far remote areas to thrive and to employ others.
‘The ultimate goal is to uplift the rural economy and just to make sure they become able to sustain themselves,’ he said.
Source: NAMPA