Kenya’s youth advocate Obonyo wins Pan African Humanitarian Award

Kenya’s youth advocate, Raphael Obonyo, has won the 2017 Pan African Humanitarian Award.

Mr Obonyo was awarded the coveted prize last week at the Pan African Humanitarian Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The award recognises the impact of Mr Obonyo’s work on social leadership, youth empowerment and his persistence in voicing youth development issues in Africa.

At the award ceremony, the jury also noted that Mr Obonyo, through his organisation, the Youth Congress of Kenya, has for the last 10 years been training young people from informal settlements in Nairobi on entrepreneurship and sourcing grants for their business start-ups.

EMPLOYMENT

This, they added, had gone a long way to instil socio-economic stability in thousands of young people, created employment opportunities in the jua kali sector and helped to minimize poverty and crime.

Currently, over 15,000 young people are beneficiaries of the youth entrepreneurship programme which is run by the Youth Congress of Kenya.

The jury also noted that Mr Obonyo had, through the Obonyo Foundation, promoted the education of disadvantaged young people in slums through merit and non-merit based scholarships.

Mr Obonyo, a public policy expert, was named the runner-up in the 2016 UN Persons of the Year for his contribution to youth empowerment.

He is the author of “Conversations about the youth in Kenya”.

This was the third edition of the Pan African Humanitarian Summit and Awards, an annual event that recognises personalities who have demonstrated kindness in building and supporting the less privileged in their communities in Africa.