29 Apr 2018

After benefitting from Young African Youth Leaders Initiative (YALI), two of its alumni had vowed to improve the lives of other young people in Ngamiland by imparting the skills they learnt during their YALI sojourn.

Already, the two young leaders are training a total of 48 youth in Maun on civic education.

The duo, Lame Olebile, a Mandela Washington fellow of 2016, and Anthony Molosi who is the YALI Southern African Regional Leadership Centre 2016 alumnus.

In an interview, Olebile explained that the civic education programme was sponsored by the US embassy under YALI grants.

"The project seeks to empower in and out of school youth between the age of 16 and 35 to understand their political environment and actively participate in democracy with an informed view of their civic duty and a respect for human rights," she said.

Olebile further explained that through the project they aimed at achieving a high level of success by thoroughly engaging youth from different tertiary, secondary schools and general youth.

She also explained that the youth were selected after being shortlisted between January and February.

Olebile explained that the objective of the civic education was also to engage young people on creative and interactive exercises that would increase their understanding and appreciation of democracy and human rights.

She added that the programme aimed at increasing understanding on the role that citizens, particularly youth, should play in a democracy to ensure the rule of law, human rights and effective governance.

Molosi on the other hand, highlighted that they had already held three workshops and they were left with two more.

He added that the first workshop was on human rights foundation followed by Botswana Constitution and understanding the elections.

“We are left with two workshops on the Role of Oversight Institutions and Citizen Participation,” Molosi said.

He further stressed that on the series of workshops, they had been working with different organisations such as Ombudsman, Thuso Rehabilitation Centre and Independence Electoral Commission.

“We will continue to work with others such as DCEC and some YALI alumni,” he said.

He also highlighted that their last workshop would be conducted around June and in July and they would be undertaking an inter group competition for the participants and the winner would get a small grant that would be used for the community outreach of their preference. Ends