The Role Of Community Based Organizations In Addressing Youth Unemployment In Ndeiya Division, Kiambu County

Abstract

High rates of youth unemployment pose a major threat to socio-economic development in the African continent. The study therefore endeavours to establish the role played by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in ameliorating youth unemployment and its concomitant challenges. The research study established the role played by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in addressing youth unemployment in Ndeiya division, Kiambu county. The research study is aimed at achieving the following objectives, to establish the role of CBOs in addressing youth unemployment, to assess the socio-economic factors contributing towards youth unemployment, to assess the challenges faced by CBOs in addressing youth unemployment and to identify best practices that can be adopted from the existing community based organizations in addressing youth unemployment. The study was guided by structural functionalism theory by Herbert Spencer (1898), Emile Durkheim (1893), Talcott Parsons (1961), and Robert Merton 1957), Social Learning Theory Albert Bandura (1973) and Hopelessness Theory by Abramson et al., (1989). A cross-sectional research design was used to purposively sample a population of 100 respondents (70 youth, 20 CBO Social Workers, 10 key informants and 2 focus group discussions with parents). The data collection tools used included questionnaires, individual interviews and FGDs. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 for Windows was used to anlyze quantitative data and qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis.The main findings of the research were; youth unemployment is a key problem and CBOs play a critical role in addressing youth unemployment in Ndeiya division. The findings also reveal that majority of the youth (86.2%) have been without work and seeking work since their last job and since they left school. Most of these affected youth are between 18-25 years of age. Majority of the youth indicated that they fail to get employed due to lack of viable skills. In addition, women and men are affected differently by youth unemployment. The major causes of unemployment include; youths lacking access of information on new jobs, youths do not have the right skills and education and youths do not have the needed experience. The study concludes that youth unemployment needs to be addressed from a holistic perspective including all the stakeholders (government, CBOs and society at large). This also entails political goodwill, altitudinal change on youth unemployment and resource mobilization. The major recommendation of the study is that CBOs need to play a pivotal role in addressing youth unemployment using innovative and indigenous strategies.