03 Jun 2015

The founder of Bona Naledi is committed to ensuring that behaviours and life styles of Old Naledi youths are healthy, productive and contributing to the community in which they live.

Mr Salim Kegodile said in setting up the society, he was motivated by the fact that as a youth of Old Naledi, they live in an area hard to access and has limited social services.

Speaking at the official launch of Bona Naledi Society recently conducted by the U.S Embassy at Old Naledi Community Hall Mr Kegodile said as Old Naledi youth, they are to some extent marginalised and faced serious challenges in their lives.

He said they also faced challenges such as an increased number of primary school- dropouts, early sex debut, pre-marital and early pregnancies, domestic violence, increased crime rates by youths, to mention a few.

“These phenomena is explicit in Old Naledi and the challenges had been documented and expressed by the administrative and political leadership, a number of initiatives had been introduced but almost always dismally fail because they target the outward expression of the challenges and not the root causes,” decried Mr Kegodile.

Mr Kegodile said their project activities include working on five areas namely education, ICT, sports, arts and entrepreneurship.

“We are popular and known as a community of soccer, not only that but exporting a number of players, hence the need to add other sporting codes. What Bona Naledi has will reintroduce field and track events as high jump and long jump and many others to benefit our youth,” said Mr Kegodile.

He said business looms every day in Old Naledi, both legal and illegal hence they have to tap into this potential and turn this entrepreneures to establish themselves and they will create linkages with existing government programs such Youth Development Fund.

For his part, the U.S Embassy Representative, Ms Sophia O’Donnell said the U.S Embassy is very excited about the formation of the organisation.

 “We have worked with Kegodile on several projects targeting youth through organizations such as the Youth Health Organisation (YOHO), Kast Foundation and the “I Am” Project,” said Ms O’Donnell.

She said along with other hardworking individuals, Kegodile’s work has offered life skills through theatre at 62 schools throughout the country.

“We have trained over 1,400 youth at Youth Empowerment Scheme boot camps, coordinated by the Embassy’s Art Envoy programs to bring American play writers, actors and choreographers to work with youth, and help produce the hip-hop CD Get Up & Go, which reached thousands of kids with lifesaving health messages,” said Ms O’Donnell.

She highlighted that her Embassy spearheads youth focused programs such as Youth Employment Program, which is part of a 16 million dollar project intended to help improve the quality of life of vulnerable children, women and families.

“Through our Education U.S.A advising center, we reached over 9,000 Batswana youth last year and increased the number of Batswana studying in the US by 5.6 per cent,” said Ms O’Donnell.

In addition, she said they recently launched the English Access Micro scholarship Program in Mochudi with Stepping Stones International, to provide leadership and English language skills to disadvantaged 13 to 15 year olds through participation in an intensive two year after school program which focused on English language skills, vocational training, and community service activities.  ENDS