Nakuru Youth takes center stage in community Development

BY BILLY MUTAI
It is the young people who make a nation and it is the same people who bring the long-built nation to either greater or low heights

A local Youth group under the umbrella of, Rapid Effective Participatory Action in Community Theater Education and Development (REPACTED) is set to change socio-economic status of youth in Nakuru’s cosmopolitan town and beyond.

The Community-Based Organization is a group of trained youth and volunteers from all walks of life and vast cultural backgrounds. The organization is now counting its eighth year of community outreach, communication and education on HIV Aids, TB Malaria, Drug and substance abuse.

Likewise, gender issues and sexuality education and environmental conservation are the group’s other core activities. James Karango one of the group’s leaders says that they have been successful and effective in their activities that gears towards elevating awareness in local communities. “With support from youth who turn up in large numbers in our frequent events, we get best opportunities and forum to pass our messages” He says.

The organization appreciates the digital world especially with the utilization of their web page in communicating to vast numbers of youth and thus a remedy also to busy youth in Diaspora.

The Organization’s members usually carry out prison visits, secondary school projects, sex workers education workshops among other community-based activities. Further, the youth are armed with tips on training fellow youth on how to make a good future.

REPACTED is celebrating its efforts having motivated sex workers in Nakuru town and Salgaa to abandon unethical activities and engage in vocational jobs and training programmes like tailoring and Hair dressing. “We enlighten them on how to have safe sex and gradually move out on sex work activities which brings about a complete behavioral change,” Karongo says.

At the Nakuru GK Prison, the organization has been working towards creating awareness on HIV Aids, TB and stigmatization among both inmates and prison keepers Theater and Music have been the organization’s tools of enhancing its awareness mission in the local communitys. Through the programme; Tumaini la Wagonjwa Gerezani Post Test Club, HIV positive inmates received post test services and ARVs.

REPACTED currently runs a peer Education and counseling project in several secondary schools within Nakuru town. Menegai High School, ST. Saviours Secondary School, Nakuru Day Secondary School, Langalanga Secondary School and Moi Forces School are among the beneficiariesof the project. Under Peer Education and Counseling Clubs, students are trained to approach issues in a sensible and constructive way. Discipline, drug and substance abuse, illegal sex and human health are among the thematic topics.

With the help from the Programme for Appreciate Technology in Health-Kenya (PATH-Kenya), REPACTED has managed to hold more than eight hundred community outreach events for the last five years.

The organization has also been sending some of its members to international seminars on HIV Aids education among other society based programmes.
Further, the organization has won various awards which have been their inspiration.

REPACTED is forging on setting up an established resource centre with library, internet services, game facilities and conference rooms that will benefit the local youth.