When Strathmore University's Community Outreach Programme (COP) carried out a survey among the youth of neighbouring Madaraka Estate, asking them how they thought the University could work more with the estate, many suggested a course in basic computer skills, and a series of talks on how to set up a small business.

Both of these initiatives have already taken place: the computer course, with a class of 30, ran every Saturday morning from March to September last year. After a slow start, enthusiasm and interest picked up and much of the class started to come half an hour early to practise on their computers, and stayed an extra half hour after classes ended. The day the certificates were presented, a representative from myjobseye.com selected five of them for attachment.

The second computer course, with the same number of students, is about to begin. The main difference between the two courses is that the second time round there will be an equal number of young men and women; for the first course, the ladies were less than one third. Many of those who have signed up for this second course have been doing the just ended micro-management course (the series of talks on setting up a small business they had originally asked for).

This course was the first of many similar courses SU intends to offer to unemployed youth from the neighbouring estates and slum villages. The students came for six Saturday mornings, and covered every possible topic that has to do with starting one's business: from legal requirements, raising the capital, and taxes, to basic business ethics, customer care and writing a business plan. They also completed a project, and filled in an evaluation form of the course and the lecturers. Encouraged by the positive outcome and remarks of the students, we are thinking of our next target group.

Talking to one another

One of the sorry sights of our capital city, Nairobi, is the huge numbers of unemployed youth in the estates and the slum villages sitting idle or walking up and down waiting for handouts. More...