The Sunday News
WELCOME to the second edition of The Youth Zone.
The aim is to amplify young people’s voices, in particular those in school.
The column is themed on issues that affect the youth in school, their experiences and how they navigate the journey of life.
The broader vision being to nurture the youth and also have them tell the nation of their experiences.
In so doing, we are bringing up a generation of young people that are able to lead morally upright lives.
We want the children to open up and tell it as it is, on their everyday lives.
The solution lies with them as well.
They must to be the ones who dialogue with the nation, to that effect we wish to engage secondary schools and tertiary institutions in the region.
We want young people to be part of the conversations around their lives.
Most importantly, we want to assist parents and guardians to connect with learners from a position of knowledge.
The call for young people to be part of this initiative comes at the opportune time when the drug abuse scourge has caught Government attention.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week called on youths to desist from partaking in drugs and all forms of immorality that can taint their future.
It is incumbent for all stakeholders to rise up to the call and we save our youths.
There can never be such a time as this.
In times of uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 lockdowns, the impact on young people’s lives has been huge.
The Covid-19 lockdowns that shut down schools somehow brought an array of changes in the way young people perceive life and how they project the future.
Schools are the very places where the young find expression and learn without the slightest of distractions. At school, they are free from violence and drugs.
It is where they are prepared for a life of responsibility.
Schools are safe havens.
The youths at school are protected from the worse forms of infractions that have disastrous consequences to their future.
For the better part of 2019 and 2020, learners were out of the classroom as learning had to be online.
That was the time many went astray.
Instead of studying, they would opt to lounge by the streets.
In those streets it was easy to be lured to drugs, sex and crime.
Spending a solid eight hours in school helps a lot in preventing the young from ill exposure.
Now that school gates were shut and the Covid-19 pandemic presented anxiety, it became hard for vulnerable youths to adapt.
The need for escapism was through drugs.
The school environment is a support system that can help build strong characters in young people.
No matter how bad the school can be said to be, it is far better than the streets.
Concern has also come with the high number of teenage pregnancies.
Our young girls are becoming mothers.
The boys also step into parenting way too soon.
Outside the classroom, youth clubs and textbooks, there remains a barricade of cultural norms that make it taboo for young people to talk openly about drugs and alcohol use, sexual matters and makes it difficult for them to access information that may be of help.
African norms and values make talking about these issues absurd.
It is an issue that does not freely cross over the classroom wall.
Is it not the time communities open up and tackle head-on pertinent adolescent temptations that destroy our young people?
Let the young people speak too.
In recent media reports, there read a story on a family that is in search of their daughter who never returned home after being reprimanded for attending a Vuzu party.
Thembi Nesisa Mkhwananzi went to a party in 2017, she was 14 years of age.
It is reported that she feared returning home, for she would be punished.
It is no easy feat for any family to endure.
Five years of pain.
By any means, Thembi’s story is untold.
The journeys that young people of today walk through are untold.
Theirs is a story to tell. In the midst of partying and exploring life, what is it that they go through?
Even if they spend time at school, where we know they ought to be safe, is there a loophole in our communities that swallows our young people? We want young people to tell it as it is.
As a parting shot, The Youth Zone had some positive feedback last week from Mduduzi Moyo of Mehlo Arts Academy based in New Lobengula.
The academy focuses on arts development for the children and the youth in townships.
For the past ten years, Moyo and crew have been leading the fight to end drug abuse, HIV, TB and sexual opportunistic infections among the youth in Bulawayo’s health risk hotspots.
This group is largely composed of school going youths and a few high school graduates.
We say Kudos! to the group for lending a hand in guiding our youth.
*The youth are encouraged to send their stories to this column: [email protected] or [email protected]
