International Youth Day 2011

Theme: Change Our World Today, we join the world in marking the 25th anniversary of the International Youth Day. This day celebrates, appreciates, and encourages the young people of our nations whose vitality, ingenuity, and vision can be the greatest asset to any community that chooses to do one thing- listen. We in the world and we in Kenya must strive to pay greater attention to our youth. We do our nations a great dis-service when we choose to aggravate rather than support young people and when we choose to tell them how its done rather than listen to how it could be done. We do our youth a great disservice when we choose to sideline them and push them into complacency rather than demand the excellence we know them to be capable of.

We must, therefore, make every effort to listen to their concerns, their grievances, their ideas and their aspirations. We must hear them and allow the words that they say to affect the deepest parts of our rational conscience and emotional intellect. We must allow ourselves to be surprised by the vast extent of their wit, creativity, and innovative ability, to empathize with their challenges and to understand their lives. We must stop looking at the youth as an issue to be dealt with and begin to see them as a formidable force to be reckoned with. As a group of able-minded, creative, hopeful people with ambitions that we should encourage and opinions that we must listen to.

Most of us have heard the words youth and change used together many times before. It is hardly a unique idea and yet it continues to present itself to us. Perhaps because young people have not come to experience the full weight of cynicism that so often finds its way into our hearts and minds with age; perhaps because they have not come to fully understand the need for compromise and trade-offs, or perhaps because they have not fully internalized the meaning of impossible or because their minds have not been so dulled by reality that they can no longer dream- whatever the case may

be, there is a universal expectation that youth can and should be agents of change. It is a concept that has outlived generations and a solution we continue to arrive at. Yet for the most part we cannot expect world changers from people who are so burdened with surviving their day-to-day existence that they are unable or unwilling to use the little time and energy they have left to themselves to dream or hope or attempt to consider how they can be involved in something bigger than themselves. It is so sad, to witness the radiance, the hope and the idealism of our youth be snuffed out by hardships that we could help to ease and disillusion that we have had a part in causing. I truly applaud every young person who has attempted to in anyway rise above their situation and pursue a passion, or help their community or even help their family. I cannot begin to express the admiration I have for your resilience. For as long as you continue in the same spirit- you cannot fail. You are great beacons of hope to our country and it is my prayer that we would be more like you. On this day, I beg us to reach for that idealistic attitude and way of thinking that is often associated with the young. We must first believe in our hearts that seeing a fuller realization of their potential is one of the most rewarding and satisfying things we can do. If we believe this, I am convinced we will be able and more than willing to take the practical steps towards supporting the youth regardless of the cost to our own personal comfort. As we believe, we will be able to deal aggressively with those issues that stand in the way of their becoming stereotype breakers, community shapers and, eventually, world changers! Thank You and God Bless you all. Uhuru Kenyatta Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance