Youth Empowerment Event

Picture
The Youth Cultural Connection Project  hosted the Youth Empowerment Event on 31 July, 2009 at the Fish Hoek Civic Centre, sponsored by Africa Unite.The exciting event worked to empower young people from different backgrounds within the Western Cape to come together to create ways of strengthening their communities. 40 Grade 7 youth from Masiphumelele, Lavender Hill, and Retreat were selected to attend the event.

The Activities

Picture
Activity 1: Our Community
    The Youth participants were divided into 8 groups of five mixed with the youth from the three different communities. The youth were asked to create a poster of their communities. The posters must include five strengths within the community and five challenges.

Activity 2: Our Rights
    The youth received a sheet provided by RAPCAN (Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect) on the Rights and Responsibilities of children. We discussed some of the rights which children have the the responsibilities each child has to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

Activity 3: Our Vision
          The youth participants were asked to look at the posters of their communities and to come up with a new poster of the vision which they have for their communities. They were also asked to create a community project for the youth to implement in their communities in order to use their strengths to work towards the community’s challenges.

Picture
Youth Sharing their posters
Our Rights
The participants came up with a list of the rights they believe children have. These include:

We want the minister to give us a better life
For children who does not go to school
For children who does not have parents to live a   better life
For children to go to bed after eating
To stop gangsters from making people’s life hard
 We want no violence and harm done to us
We want a clean community to play in
We don’t want any drugs in our community
We want gangs to stop robbing people
 Children have the right to be safe and to be free
 Children have the right to be loved by their parents and their family
 Children have the right to a good education and to be something when they grow up
Children have the right to have a name and not to be calling names
We want to have a healthy community without drug abuse, alcohol abuse by a young generation, teenage pregnancy, crime

Picture
Youth sharing a lunch of chicken, pies, and rolls
Picture
The youth enjoyed playing soccer together

Youth Cultural connection project, Cape Town South Africa