Youth Groups Bring Unity
Creates Better future for the young generation and their communities
Despite of an ordinary secondary education, Felister’s life was still constrained with poor living conditions. She was always idle and dilemma on what her life was going to be, but with her active mind she never settled for nothing but struggled to get ends meet.
Felister Mathias is a girl of 26 years old who lives in Masemele street of Shibula ward in Ilemela district, a place where majority of youths are unemployed. After graduating secondary school, she didn’t get any formal work except some house chores and anything that comes along the way. She had no means to settle personal expenses, help parents and other young siblings at home. Her life was tough, and at times she thought of being a home maid in town or getting married just like the other girls in her community.
One day she met her friend who is in the Youth Group and encouraged her to join so that can learn new ideas, collaborate with other youths, utilize the available opportunities and bring about self development. She joined VIJANA NGUVU KAZI GROUP in 2017. After attending several capacity building sessions, Felister was interested in tailoring. She used her savings in the group to set up a tailoring shop in November 2018, and because of her unique business in the community she got many customers and the shop grew faster. “I bought another sewing machine which I am using to train other girls in the community at a little fee of 15,000/= TZS per month” she said.
Felister thanks TAHEA Mwanza for coming up with the idea of promoting youth empowerment, because of this she has been able to achieve her dream. Felister says “The money I get from this business I use it to support my family, I have a young brother who is in Secondary school and little sisters in Primary school, so I pay for their needs”. She appreciates being in the youth group and added that ‘‘The group provides opportunity to connect with friends, I am confident in what I do, have entrepreneurial and leadership skills which are guiding me in my business’’.
Working with youth is very challenging, TAHEA Mwanza is happy to see some of the youths like Felister are coming up as role models to inspire others and contribute to bigger effort of empowering youth towards sustainable development.