Youth month
is just a few days away and as we know, many organizations will be targeting
our poorer communities with campaigns. Some of these just to celebrate youth
day and commemorate those who died on this day 36 years ago, some with
developmental objectives for our young people, all of these well intended. Some
of these organizations will most likely disappear after this day and only to be
seen again next year June 16, while some will invest in long term projects to
empower our young people.
Like many of these organizations I find myself having to plan a youth day campaign as part of my deliverables in the organization that I work for. Now this is not an easy task. Several times I have gone as close as pulling my hair out, but every time I get close to it I realize that I actually need my hair, it has become an accessory. The focus of this campaign being on the youth, I thought it would make sense to involve them in every step in planning this event. Being unfamiliar with the area in which this event is to take place I thought the schools would be a good entry point into the communities, and I then started working with learners from various schools in the area. So each school formed a group that represents them in the planning committee. Now I must say working with vibrant young people can be very exciting and so are their ideas, some a bit impractical but yet very innovative. This must be the best group I could ever have worked with. They take initiative, are creative and somewhat really motivated. Now this came as a surprise to me after having had meetings with principals from these schools about the challenges they face with young people particularly in schools.
Typically, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence, racism, gangsterism and school drop-out were among the endless and very depressing lists of challenges given. After speaking “off the record” to some of the educators, the next step was to speak to the people towards whom all the attention is turned this month-youth. Yet again the same challenges came up and a few reasons as to why these challenges persist despite efforts to address them. A few suggestions on how these can be addressed also followed. Now some of the problems mentioned was a gap that exists between parents, teachers and the learners. The teachers feel that the parents seem not to care about what takes place in the schools and don’t bother to get involved. The learners feel that they learn at school, then have to go home to dysfunctional families, parents who don’t understand them, and environments that are not conducive for learning. I did not get to speak to the parents but I suspect that there are two arguments they can use in their own defence. Firstly, parents might be feeling that they don’t know how to discipline their children anymore and they have lost control and they may feel that their children do not respect them anymore. Secondly, parents may be too busy trying to make a living, not having the time to attend meetings with schools and teachers given the socio-economical context of these communities. Now this is a very important challenge identified by young people in the schools. One other problem emphasized is the fact that young people no longer know the meaning and significance of youth day. Seemingly the events of this day 36 years ago does not mean anything to them or they are oblivious to the efforts and sacrifices that were made just so that they can have a better education 36 years later and still choose to walk out of school because they would be better off being parents. So the learners suggested that debates around the significance and events of youth day 1976 would create awareness among learners through continuous engagement on all the other challenges at hand.
Listening to these young people I realized that they seem to know exactly where the problem is, and to some extent know how to address these challenges and where things may have gone wrong. This got me thinking about what exactly my purpose is in this community. The young people seem to have all the answers, they know the problems and they have the solutions to the problems, yet year in and year out they wait for organizations from outside to come and host once-off events that provide them with good entertainment for the day and good speeches which is great but very few of these organizations go back soon after the event to evaluate the impact of their work. Now for me it has become clear that young people seldom take these messages to heart as they hear the same thing over and over again, so I would think that they attend these events because they promise entertainment and some refreshments, which are appreciated by some of them because the rand is just really low in these communities.
So here is the story. We have young people in our communities who understand the challenges that hold our communities back, and also know how to deal with these challenges yet they choose to do nothing about it but sit and wait for the next 16th of June when strangers will once again roam their streets advertising youth day campaigns. These young people have great ideas about debates which will not only create awareness, but will also keep learners engaged, giving them little time to get up to no-good activities, yet they had to wait for me to go to their schools to express these ideas. We can’t even say they lack support from educators as they do not even share these ideas with their educators. Now it has become apparent to me that young people are de-motivated, some have given up, while some continue to dream but keep their dreams to themselves in the hope that they will materialize on their own. Needless to say that they are despondent, they just stopped dreaming and hoping for the better. Now we know that in a country like ours or any other, opportunities do not fall at anyone’s doorsteps, there is neither a Manna nor a Santa Clause handing out opportunities for success. Now this is a sad reality given the mental state that our youth seem to have adopted and this makes me wonder what our country will be like in a few years.
Now given that there are a lot of opportunities for young people today, there is also the reality that hard work tends to pay off. Generally people who work hard towards their dreams tend to succeed and this is evident in the sacrifices young people made in 1976 for a dream they truly believed in: a better education. Young people today seem to expect opportunities to come to them calling them by name instead of going out and creating opportunities. I mean they can actually get to dictate how these organizations that come to their communities once a year get to help them create and maintain continuous efforts in youth development. By engaging other young people in other communities that seem to be getting better they can learn how they can improve their own communities. I am convinced that young people have adopted the hand-out mentality. They want to be handed opportunities, jobs, education etc. I know we are in 2012 but my grandmother used to walk two hours to school everyday and that just shows the commitment and dedication and desire to be educated and make something of herself. Now we have 16 year olds walking into principals’ offices declaring themselves unfit for school because they are expecting. Do they not see anything beyond the 9 months of pregnancy? Do they not wish to be the doctors, accountants and architects that some of us wished to be when we grow up, never mind that I am neither of these today, but I found something that works better for me, a different dream that I can sustain. A friend said to me when I asked how he was doing “I am making lemonade”, life gave him lemon and that’s what he will make, and possibly the best lemonade there could be rather than complain about how he would’ve preferred oranges.
Now our young people need to learn that life does not always give you what you want. You have to work hard, dream hard and believe that your dream will come true for that will give you the motivation to work on it and prevent you from becoming a dull, angry at the world young person whose parents and educators want nothing to do with. I suspect that along with a perceived lack of opportunities among our young people is a great deal of laziness and a very destructive hand-out mentality which seem to be destroying our youth and will continue to do so unless young people decide to get up, speak out and act out. And perhaps they feel that they are not given a platform to do so as mentioned by one of the young people I worked with. Yet again, it would be so much easier for them to create their own platform that they can dictate. This exercise made me realize that young people seem to have lost their voices. This either because they are engaged in things that shouldn’t concern them, or they are just really not given the platform and this lead to the theme of my campaign being “Reclaim Your Voice”. And as a step to help young people do this I made them the centre of this campaign, the ideas are theirs, they will be planning the event, mobilise learners in their schools, market the event, perform at the event and share their experiences of being part and parcel of an event organized for them by them. So far the plans seem to be in place. Now my questions is why could these learners who seem so good at this not have done anything like this on their own, for their own schools and communities because they seem to have almost everything they need within them?
Like many of these organizations I find myself having to plan a youth day campaign as part of my deliverables in the organization that I work for. Now this is not an easy task. Several times I have gone as close as pulling my hair out, but every time I get close to it I realize that I actually need my hair, it has become an accessory. The focus of this campaign being on the youth, I thought it would make sense to involve them in every step in planning this event. Being unfamiliar with the area in which this event is to take place I thought the schools would be a good entry point into the communities, and I then started working with learners from various schools in the area. So each school formed a group that represents them in the planning committee. Now I must say working with vibrant young people can be very exciting and so are their ideas, some a bit impractical but yet very innovative. This must be the best group I could ever have worked with. They take initiative, are creative and somewhat really motivated. Now this came as a surprise to me after having had meetings with principals from these schools about the challenges they face with young people particularly in schools.
Typically, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence, racism, gangsterism and school drop-out were among the endless and very depressing lists of challenges given. After speaking “off the record” to some of the educators, the next step was to speak to the people towards whom all the attention is turned this month-youth. Yet again the same challenges came up and a few reasons as to why these challenges persist despite efforts to address them. A few suggestions on how these can be addressed also followed. Now some of the problems mentioned was a gap that exists between parents, teachers and the learners. The teachers feel that the parents seem not to care about what takes place in the schools and don’t bother to get involved. The learners feel that they learn at school, then have to go home to dysfunctional families, parents who don’t understand them, and environments that are not conducive for learning. I did not get to speak to the parents but I suspect that there are two arguments they can use in their own defence. Firstly, parents might be feeling that they don’t know how to discipline their children anymore and they have lost control and they may feel that their children do not respect them anymore. Secondly, parents may be too busy trying to make a living, not having the time to attend meetings with schools and teachers given the socio-economical context of these communities. Now this is a very important challenge identified by young people in the schools. One other problem emphasized is the fact that young people no longer know the meaning and significance of youth day. Seemingly the events of this day 36 years ago does not mean anything to them or they are oblivious to the efforts and sacrifices that were made just so that they can have a better education 36 years later and still choose to walk out of school because they would be better off being parents. So the learners suggested that debates around the significance and events of youth day 1976 would create awareness among learners through continuous engagement on all the other challenges at hand.
Listening to these young people I realized that they seem to know exactly where the problem is, and to some extent know how to address these challenges and where things may have gone wrong. This got me thinking about what exactly my purpose is in this community. The young people seem to have all the answers, they know the problems and they have the solutions to the problems, yet year in and year out they wait for organizations from outside to come and host once-off events that provide them with good entertainment for the day and good speeches which is great but very few of these organizations go back soon after the event to evaluate the impact of their work. Now for me it has become clear that young people seldom take these messages to heart as they hear the same thing over and over again, so I would think that they attend these events because they promise entertainment and some refreshments, which are appreciated by some of them because the rand is just really low in these communities.
So here is the story. We have young people in our communities who understand the challenges that hold our communities back, and also know how to deal with these challenges yet they choose to do nothing about it but sit and wait for the next 16th of June when strangers will once again roam their streets advertising youth day campaigns. These young people have great ideas about debates which will not only create awareness, but will also keep learners engaged, giving them little time to get up to no-good activities, yet they had to wait for me to go to their schools to express these ideas. We can’t even say they lack support from educators as they do not even share these ideas with their educators. Now it has become apparent to me that young people are de-motivated, some have given up, while some continue to dream but keep their dreams to themselves in the hope that they will materialize on their own. Needless to say that they are despondent, they just stopped dreaming and hoping for the better. Now we know that in a country like ours or any other, opportunities do not fall at anyone’s doorsteps, there is neither a Manna nor a Santa Clause handing out opportunities for success. Now this is a sad reality given the mental state that our youth seem to have adopted and this makes me wonder what our country will be like in a few years.
Now given that there are a lot of opportunities for young people today, there is also the reality that hard work tends to pay off. Generally people who work hard towards their dreams tend to succeed and this is evident in the sacrifices young people made in 1976 for a dream they truly believed in: a better education. Young people today seem to expect opportunities to come to them calling them by name instead of going out and creating opportunities. I mean they can actually get to dictate how these organizations that come to their communities once a year get to help them create and maintain continuous efforts in youth development. By engaging other young people in other communities that seem to be getting better they can learn how they can improve their own communities. I am convinced that young people have adopted the hand-out mentality. They want to be handed opportunities, jobs, education etc. I know we are in 2012 but my grandmother used to walk two hours to school everyday and that just shows the commitment and dedication and desire to be educated and make something of herself. Now we have 16 year olds walking into principals’ offices declaring themselves unfit for school because they are expecting. Do they not see anything beyond the 9 months of pregnancy? Do they not wish to be the doctors, accountants and architects that some of us wished to be when we grow up, never mind that I am neither of these today, but I found something that works better for me, a different dream that I can sustain. A friend said to me when I asked how he was doing “I am making lemonade”, life gave him lemon and that’s what he will make, and possibly the best lemonade there could be rather than complain about how he would’ve preferred oranges.
Now our young people need to learn that life does not always give you what you want. You have to work hard, dream hard and believe that your dream will come true for that will give you the motivation to work on it and prevent you from becoming a dull, angry at the world young person whose parents and educators want nothing to do with. I suspect that along with a perceived lack of opportunities among our young people is a great deal of laziness and a very destructive hand-out mentality which seem to be destroying our youth and will continue to do so unless young people decide to get up, speak out and act out. And perhaps they feel that they are not given a platform to do so as mentioned by one of the young people I worked with. Yet again, it would be so much easier for them to create their own platform that they can dictate. This exercise made me realize that young people seem to have lost their voices. This either because they are engaged in things that shouldn’t concern them, or they are just really not given the platform and this lead to the theme of my campaign being “Reclaim Your Voice”. And as a step to help young people do this I made them the centre of this campaign, the ideas are theirs, they will be planning the event, mobilise learners in their schools, market the event, perform at the event and share their experiences of being part and parcel of an event organized for them by them. So far the plans seem to be in place. Now my questions is why could these learners who seem so good at this not have done anything like this on their own, for their own schools and communities because they seem to have almost everything they need within them?
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