Empowering the Youth to Transform the Future

Youth empowerment programs aim to invest in the potential of youth by elevating their aspiration, building core skills and offering mentorship to prepare them for the journey ahead. We celebrate all the remarkable work that many youth organisations are leading to make a difference for the next generation. One of these organisations is I Choose Life Africa whose mission is to improve life opportunities for youth through strategic empowerment. From our conversation with Mike Mutungi CEO and Founder, we have three reflections capturing the lessons and highlights from his career and his work at ICL.

Program Design – Prioritising Empowerment and Ownership?

After decades of working on youth development programs, Mike has gathered insights on the elements that make programs successful. At the beginning of their program, the goal was on HIV prevention among youth in universities. The selection of universities as a hub of influence was a strategic decision that enabled them to amplify their impact. Their strategy was to influence behaviour change instead of dictating rules and instructions to young people. They focused on providing information and resources to enable youth to make informed choices for themselves. To be successful with behaviour change initiatives, it was important to know their target group. ICL achieved this by ensuring that their programs are always designed by the youth themselves. They trained peer educators who would effectively reach out to other youth within their circles and educate them on HIV prevention and care. Their model exemplifies youth-led initiatives that foster ownership for program participants which leads to long term impact.?

Additionally, he describes that programs have to challenge the youth with exciting opportunities, encourage healthy competition, and bring out the best in the participants. The goal of programs is to expose young people to new ways of thinking which will push them out of their comfort zone and lead them to action. Participants had to earn their place in the program and in return, ICL would ensure they implemented engaging, relevant, and consistent programs.?

The other strategy that has worked for them is to create a strong brand identity and a community that youth would like to be a part of. As Mike described, in their campus editions, they focused on a thorough selection process that ensured only the most committed individuals were part of their program. With this in mind, the individuals in the group offered great representation for others to draw inspiration from. Lastly, Mike emphasised that youth programs should maintain a culture of excellence through promoting values like punctuality, teamwork, and task completion.

Building Financial Sustainability?

Financial sustainability is at the core of an organisation’s longevity and impact. Mike extensively discussed some of the lessons they have learned along the way when it comes to funding and sustainability. One of the main lessons he emphasizes on is the over reliance on one donor. When ICL received their first major funding, they went on to work with the same donor for a couple of years on their expansion goal to different universities. Later on, the priorities for the funder shifted and this meant that ICL’s funding would soon be coming to an end. Mike shares that this challenge led to a lot of downsizing and reviewing of salaries with the team to keep programs running. They took the lessons from this experience, and they created new plans for their future, and they began to deliberately work on diversifying their income streams and pursuing new donors.

Expansion and scaling require a lot of resources. Mike described one of the ingenious ways they used to navigate growth. Their strategy was to co-opt universities into investing in their program at I Choose Life Africa. He shared the example of requesting for resourced office spaces from universities, allowing them to be joint partners who contribute to the goals. This brilliant move enabled them to expand to different universities while reducing their costs.?

Lastly, I Choose Life Africa also adopted the social entrepreneurship approach as a model to enhance financial sustainability. This option complements their donor-funded programs and allows them to generate more income for their activities. They created and packaged products that could be sold to those who can afford them, and the income generated then funds more programs. This model demonstrates how organisations can blend purpose and sustainability in order to achieve lasting impact for the communities they serve.?

Prioritising Action to Achieve Wider Impact?

Mike Mutungi is a good example of an individual who has mastered the art of translating good intentions into actions. With his engineering background, he somehow ventured in to the world of HIV prevention among youth. He would see young people in his family and community dying of AIDS and he wanted to do something to solve the problem. He described how he was initially worried about his lack of experience in this field, but he did not let that stop him. Regardless of this gap, he still approached some of the lecturers at the University of Nairobi to find out if they offered any resources and classes on sexual reproductive health. From this enquiry, he established that there was a significant gap which he then worked to address by bringing different professionals on board to help start the ICL initiative. This same approach is what we need to adopt while working on youth programs. Many promises have been made to young people and a lot of goals are still stalled because people are slow to action. Looking at ICL programs, the goal is to continuously provide youth with training, information and resources so that they can implement changes in their lives and in their communities.

Mike also shared the inspiring story of how he came to write his book – Kenya Mpya – Selecting and Holding Leaders to Account. From working in the government, private sector and the NGO field, he had a lot of reflections on leadership to share which he realised he was not utilising. He decided to put together a book that advocates for a private-sector approach for the public sector. His perspective in the book encourages citizens to see themselves as shareholders in their counties and country. This then drives them to think about the leaders they elect, how to hold them accountable, and how to best utilise the resources available.?