A community centre

Welcome back.

For lack of other suitable phrases, I will refer to it as:

• Community Youth Centre
• Community Culture Centre
• Community Centre
• Community Social Cultural centre

Whatever the name. I hope you get an idea of what I am trying to refer to. A Community Youth Centre, is the place where you have the youth participating in social activities, sporting activities, get information, share ideas, have fun, spend their free time and utilize their skills & talents. This is the place where community social activities are organized and carried out. It is the place where all people, young and old go to participate in community social activities. It is where all people from the village get a chance to meet, interact, support each other and share with each other. It also the place where all people from the community come to support, cheer and watch their youth exploit their talents. It is the place where all youths showcase their different talents in music, dance, sports, ideas etc etc, name it all. I will go no further, you get the idea I suppose.

Sample Youth Centre layout

I do not want to create an impression that this is some enormous place with expensive stadiums, buildings and state-of-the-art sports fields, equipments and such kind of things. No. This place is just a normal expansive field with a number of structures and open places for activity. The main thing is that this is where the youth and the community will have a chance to engage in social activity.

I have come to this idea because I find it to have great positive impacts in our society and its development. I happen to believe that our culture is dying day in day out. Do not mistake me for the kind of people who support stone-age behaviour in the name of 'culture'. What I mean is, we play less nowadays, we dance less nowadays and we do sports less nowadays. Well, I am not disregarding our olden ways, but we need to realize that times have changed, and we have become modernized. The definition of Culture I would like understood here is "the behaviours, beliefs, values and characteristics of a particular social or ethnic group/ community". Therefore, in the old days, our great grandparents used to have community activities in dance, sports, cultural events etc. We are a modern age, and though we cannot do these things the same way they did, we cannot lose them altogether. It's wrong and has consequences. Enough of that.

The benefits I have identified in a Community Youth centre (I have already mentioned some before) include:-

1. The youth will find a place to express themselves both verbally and physically.
2. We will manage to keep our youth occupied in constructive fun activities.
3. The centre will be an avenue to disseminate information to the youth and all people (regarding awareness, development, society, idea growth etc)
4. We will as a community manage to keep the youth productive in our community.
5. ...you can add more, the list goes on and on. The benefits are countless.

My suggestion is to have such Youth centres in probably every Ward. I am positive that this is a project(s) that can completely turn around our County economically and socially. It is an idea that can be applied in the whole country if you ask me, but well, it's all about Meru county here.

Well, I hope that anyone who reads this will do something about it, in your capacity. If you find this idea worthwhile, you can reach out to our leaders or anyone that could make it possible for us. For our Society and for our future. (You can leave a comment here too).

For now, I will post the general overview of a Community Youth Centre here. How it should look like and what it should have.