empowering our youth

The following is a piece I may submit for publication in a Christian/ecclesial journal. I would be interested in feedback before that decision is made. Thanks

The capacity of our youth to teach one another is no new revelation. Peer education is one of the most influential factors in the learning process. I wish to propose that we, as churches seeking to nurture the youth in our communities, be boldly creative in empowering the youth in leadership positions. Let me share two stories which highlight the incredible capacity of our youth to, well, inspire us to try something new.

From 1998-2000 I worked in the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture in Zimbabwe, through Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). Given the rapid increase in child migration to the streets of Harare due to social, economic, psychological and health related factors, particularly the catastrophic HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping across sub-saharan Africa, Zimbabwe faced urgent questions concerning strategic responses. The Sport and Recreation Commission in Zimbabwe, partnered with the Commonwealth Sport Development Program in Canada, invited me to travel with a team of personnel to visit a project in Nairobi, Kenya. Allegedly, HIV/AIDS statistics had actually decreased within one of the largest slums in the city, due primarily to the development of the MYSA project. As noted on their website, MYSA is a self-help youth program linking sports with environmental cleanups, AIDS prevention and leadership training which involves approximately 20,000 young people. Self-help! The program brings youth of all ages together to play in sports leagues, receive education and participate in community service projects to benefit the lives of the people in the slums. The incredible thing about MYSA is the involvement of the kids themselves in the running of the project. While there are dedicated staff working to help guide the ship, it is essentially the kids who organise, structure, and run the operation. The various committees which gather are made up of kids representing their peers within the various regions of the Mathare slum.

One morning a colleague and I were invited to participate in the ‘jail kid’ project. We set off early one morning with a couple of children, Freedom and Innocence. In the van they asked questions about Manchester United, bantering away with big grins and a sparkle in their playfulness. When we arrived at the jail in downtown Nairobi the mood of Freedom and Innocence changed as they prepared for the task in hand. As we walked into the courtyard of the jail Freedom and Innocence set up tables and proceeded to lay out milk and bread. When all was ready the cell doors were open and a group of perhaps fifty children walked one behind the other  and stood against the courtyard wall. When the prison guards motioned Freedom and Innocence to begin, the children took some bread and milk and found a space in which to eat and drink. The pace was silent. These kids, picked up for begging on the streets, were crammed into the jails to await punishment. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday up to one hundred children are taken to juvenile courts. The kids range between the ages of 3-16. According to MYSA, the primary offence of the kids is that they are poor, abandoned or orphaned, and most are charged with vagrancy.

Once Freedom and Innocence had finished serving the bread and milk, the only meal the kids would receive on court day, they began to mingle with the children, trying to make eye contact and connect with the children. Their task was to gather up as much information as possible, including the kid’s names address, reason for arrest, and any information useful in reconnecting the children with family members. When Freedom and Innocence had spoken to every child in the courtyard, the kids were once more lined up and escorted back to their cells, awaiting the trucks which would take them to court.

When we arrived back at the MYSA headquarters, Freedom and Innocence were joined by other kids who gathered to receive information on the jailed children. Once all the information had been processed, the kids set off around the sixteen regions of the Mathare slum, in an attempt to locate family or extended family and inform them that their child was in jail facing court proceedings.
As we watched the kids set off on buses, on bicycles, by foot, I was truly inspired. There were plenty of other things these kids could have spent their days doing, but they chose to go the extra mile on behalf of other kids like them. The capacity of children to look out for others struck a deep cord inside.
When we arrived back in Zimbawe we took on board many lessons from our Kenyan brothers and sister and so began the Youth Education through Sport project. The YES program began working with the ‘streetkids’ of Harare, setting up soccer leagues and developing educational options during game days. Educational experts were brought in to speak to the kids on various topics, but it soon became apparent that the kids only semi-responsive. With the guidance of UNICEF, who became partners in the YES project, ‘peer education’ was adopted as the primary source of child learning. Kids in teams would select a captain and a vice captain, generally boys or girls respected within the team. These would be trained by local teachers in areas relating to AIDS prevention, and taught how to begin conversation with team mates after scheduled league games. Kids talking to kids! Kids teaching kids! Resources were developed in local languages, allowing newly trained leaders to pose questions, tell stories, or creatively engage their peers on a particular issue. Behind the scenes, experts from local community offices, such as health care workers, would be on hand to follow up as necessary to further questions that were raised following group discussion.
Evaluating the program after the first successful year, the kids informed us that they wanted to expand the educational topics to include other issues, such as drug awareness. Soon the program would spread across the country through local government and Sport and Recreation Centre structures, driven by the voice of the children themselves. UNICEF soon came on board, fully supporting the concept of ‘peer education’ as a primary source for child learning. Several years after leaving Zimbabwe, the project had expanded in phenomenal ways, reaching over twenty thousand children across Zimbabwe, and training over one thousand peer educators.

Are there any lessons that can be learned within our churches here in the US? Perhaps it’s too big a leap to jump from a prison courtyard, or the streets of Harare, to our church halls and educational centers. Different contexts reflect different needs, posing different questions which require different answers. But perhaps the leap does not have to be so grand when we reflect upon our own youth programs and how our kids are nurtured in faith. The influence of peers in the lives of our youth cannot be understated, whether in Christian youth camps or within streetgangs. This influence may not always be positive, but it is powerful. It is our responsibility to provide opportunities for positive influence…. Our youth and children have essential things to teach one another….

This articles does not intend to prescribe a ‘model’ of learning. It merely calls for us to have faith in the capacity of our youth to inform each other on their journey of faith. What are the innovative ways in which we can empower the kids of our church, creating space to ask and respond to their faith in the context of their world?