A peace initiative targeting university students has been launched ahead of the start of official campaigns for next year’s general election.
The initiative by BridgeAfrica will see the students play a key role in changing the political landscape by spreading the message of peace and harmonious co-existence.
Youth in the country have been involved in political violence and conflicts every election cycle where they have been featured as targets, perpetrators as well as direct victims.
Consequently, BridgesAfrica Chief Executive Officer Belinder Odek explained that the aim of the campaign is to do away with political violence by changing the mind-set of the youth.
This as they aim to have a civilised society in terms of how people interact with each other where politics can be talked about without insults being thrown about or people resorting to violence, she added.
Already, she said, they have mapped out regions that are heavily affected by political violence including the Rift Valley, Nyanza, Nairobi and Central, and aim to expose more people to their campaign.
BridgeAfrica CEO Belinder Odek during the launch of the peace initiative at the Technical University of Kenya.
Sensitive
She pointed out that political conversations are sensitive, especially in Kenya, and how someone gets involved matters a lot.
“The moment we start talking about politics it boils down to which political party one supports, what tribe one is from. We need to change this. This is the aim of this project,” said Ms Odek.
“With these norms we are instilling on the youth, we hope they will be able to change their mind-set and how they see leadership and governances.”
She said that the campaign will start with the university students but with time, the scope of the project will be widened to reach everyone in the country.
“We will not limit this to just students but expand to reach the local leadership of the regions we will be at. Our aim is to learn how to foster issue-based dialogue by shifting focus from politics to the problems that affect us and in the end, this will bring peace,” she said.
Tap into the youth
Ms Odek decried how the society has lost the ability to converse with each other, saying that as BridgeAfrica, they hope to tap into the youth, who form a majority of Kenya’s population, to develop constructive and empathetic “leaders of tomorrow”.
“We chose university students because they will leave campus and become the leaders of tomorrow. By teaching them how to talk to each other, we hope to finally change the political landscape in the country,” said the BridgeAfrica CEO.
The project will teach the students how to have constructive conversations tapping from norms that govern their platforms with rules like not interrupting someone when they are talking, not critiquing the person but their perspective.
“We are teaching people to focus on the issue that is being discussed as opposed to focusing on the person who is talking,” Ms Odek said. BY DAILY NATION