Institutionalisation and Operationalisation of Maisha Youth County Chapters

Background:

Maisha Youth is a national youth movement whose mission is to promote health and well being, and social economic development of every adolescent and young person through:

  • Supporting collaboration among diverse youth networks
  • Providing the tools, resources and recognition for positive youth action.

To achieve this, the National Maisha Youth Program required decentralization and institutionalization of County Chapters under the National AYP Program. The figure below illustrates the coordination and leadership structure:-

Figure 1

Intervention:

Through the capacity building of Maisha Youth County Chapter Membership on the AYP Advocacy Toolkit by the Trainers of Trainees, the county youth membership will be equipped to:

  • Advocate for increased resources; for policy prioritization; for scaling up high impact AYP service delivery actions/programs
  • Regularly build capacity for youth networks within counties e.g. development of context specific resources
  • Provide platforms for enhancing collaboration and partnership between various actors and youth networks.

By the end of the 2020/21 financial year, with the support of Global Fund and GoK-R, Maisha Youth County Chapters were established in 46 counties with a total of 230 youth leaders trained on the Advocacy Toolkit with skills such as carrying out research and generating evidence for advocacy, resource mobilization and communication skills and strategies towards contributing to the country’s HIV response. In addition to these skills, they were trained on a standardized minimum package of information on HIV, SRHR and SGBV.

The county chapters will be supported to train an additional 10 youth to form the chapter county leadership and membership. The chapters will the develop workplans and strategic plans supported by the county and national priorities as outlined in the KASF and CAIPs. Further with the skills from the workshops they will be responsible for implementing and evaluating the programs that they implement designed by them and for them. This strategy will really put the young people at the center of the response and change the engagement of young people by making it meaningful and sustainable.