23 May 2023

Youth Empowered Botswana (YEB) has been hailed for empowering young people to break the cycle of poverty.

Speaking during a career and health fair at Moeti kgotla the deputy district commissioner Mr Boammaruri Otlhogile acknowledged the organisation for their efforts to empower the youth with skills that foster entrepreneurship, and promote wellness as well as the arts, sports and culture.

The fair themed, Holistic Wellness, Physical, Mental, Financial and Spiritual, attracted pupils from junior and secondary schools, members of the community and experts in different fields.

The organisation has also collaborated with Village Development Committees (VDCs) to complement government efforts to empower and support youth.

As such, Mr Otlhogile said the VDCs were strategically positioned in communities and made great team players in that regard. Mr Otlhogile further commended YEB for their holistic approach that encompassed issues of health be it physical, mental, emotional, social, financial or spiritual saying in order to be considered well, it was imperative not to neglect any of the areas.

“I am happy to witness how YEB was able to work, collaborate and team up with VDCs particularly in helping  VDC to build meaningful partnerships, a step towards empowering the youth through participation in events such as this one,” he added.

Mr Otlhogile also appreciated that YEB would be conducting a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) documentary with the support of Women Against Rape and other stakeholders.

The documentary, he said would dig deeper into the root causes of GBV and contribute to strengthening GBV prevention.

He pointed out that Botswana Police recorded 2 789 cases of rape between January and November 2020 when the country was in the grip of lockdown compared to 2 265 in 2019.

The figures, he said did not include other forms of GBV saying that an estimated 67 per cent of women in the country report having experienced some form of gender violence in their lifetime including partner and non-partner violence.

Furthermore, Mr Otlhogile revealed that gender equality and empowerment of women and girls could not be achieved without the involvement of men and boys.

YEB representative Ms Pusetso Morapedi urged young people to adopt mindset change to live a healthy life. 

She appreciated that youth were faced with challenges of social ills which eventually breed trauma and poverty urging them to also take advantage of existing structures and available programmes aimed at improving their livelihoods.

She said their aim was to have an empowered youth who add value to society.

“At the end we expected both youth and elders to have increased knowledge to make good choices about ellness and improved attitude to change behaviours,” she added. Ends