PaaMoja Initiative

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PaaMoja Initiative is a community-based organization that gives youth in Mathare Slums and other Nairobi’s underserved communities an opportunity to achieve their greatest leadership and livelihood potential.
We equip these youth with life skills, resources, and most importantly, the opportunity to design and execute programs to give back to their community.
We believe that every individual can be a leader, and that in the process of becoming a leader, one must follow and learn – hence our mantra – Follow. Learn. Lead.

Our Mission
Our ambition is to positively impact the day-to-day lifestyles of people living within the Mathare Valley and its neighbourhoods.

Our Vision
We envision a future where a critical mass of young people in Mathare and other underserved communities in Nairobi, contribute and participate in the positive development of their community.

Our activities focus on children´s and adolescent´s rights, sexual reproductive health, personal and community leadership, and other critical life skills, and aim to improve knowledge, strengthen awareness, and empower Mathare´s residents to make smart lifestyle choices related to these topics.

Programs:
• Decent Income Youth Empowerment Program (DIYEP) seeks to support unemployed youth, especially girls, with entrepreneurship and employability skills as well as providing them with gender-based violence awareness and rights education
• Watoto Pamoja: Through Watoto Pamoja we seek to advance violence-free environments in homes, schools and community for children & adolescents to develop their full potential in Korogocho Slums, Nairobi County.
• RUKA! Youth Leadership Conference combines design thinking, open-space methodology and rights-based approach by creating the infrastructure to cultivate and support young change-makers from under-served (non-formal) areas in their journey to tackle the toughest challenges in their personal lives and communities.
• Adole Chat!: The main agenda of Adole Chat! Program is to reach out to adolescents in the marginalised non-formal schools in Mathare Slum and its environs. Our weekly sessions are designed to offer upper primary pupils a chance to talk openly about issues that affect them in regards to sexuality, leadership and life skills - simply put; “Demystifying Myths”. Adole Chat! Program currently runs in 4 schools – CODMAN Academy, Bridge International Academy, MCEDO Beijing School and NECI Academy respectively. Our implementation plan has been to offer high standard training to our own facilitators who eventually hold discussion sessions with our targeted adolescents. Their main work is to offer guidance rather than plainly teaching. But in some cases they ought to differentiate facts from myths for the benefit of the class.
• Sekete - The Real Sex Talk: Sekete is a “sheng” (urban language mostly used by youth) word for Sex. The program is designed to create sexual awareness among teens in Mathare Slums. Teens are challenged to become more aware of issues, prejudices and experiences in their sexuality.
• iBase: To activate slum youth talent by providing a space to interact with peers and mentors, hence learn employable core skills.

Titus Kuria is the Founder of PaaMoja Initiative.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.