YWCA embarks on recruitment drive
Botswana Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) has embarked on a membership recruitment drive targeting young people to resuscitate the association.
At the just ended Botswana YWCA annual conference in Gaborone, YWCA’s national president, Ms Tshoganetso Paphane, said the association was on a countrywide recruitment of young people, hence the launch of Letlhogela project, which is made of school going pupils.
Ms Paphane noted that the initiative was meant to attract both girls and boys across the country, especially in the rural areas and introduce them to YWCA’s life, enhancing business activities that could sustain their lives in future.
She noted that since its establishment in 1962, the organisation promoted transformational intergenerational leadership, empowering women and girls as the fabric of society on home management. She therefore, said YWCA had, through its active involvement and participation in issues of national development, partnered with stakeholders such as Gender Affairs Department, CEDA and Registrar of Societies.
She said the association’s stakeholders and sponsors continued to work together on the journey to bringing women and young people to the forefront of improved livelihoods.
Ms Paphane said her association had continued to realign itself to respond to the challenges facing women and young people today such as limited sexuality education among young people, low safe male circumcision, mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS as well as female and male cancers, which were commonly referred to as silent killers.
Mr Thuso Molefe from the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) said the conference afforded them an opportunity to voice out the role of young men pertaining to issues affecting the youth. He said neglecting young boys made them to be more vulnerable and seen as number one perpetrators of social ills.
Botswana YMCA was launched in 2012 with the aim to promote physical, intellectual, spiritual, social well-being of young men and boys, the society at large, and to empower them to take responsibility and assume leadership at all levels.
Mr Molefe said since then, YMCA had been mobilising young men and boys around the country for male involvement in national programmes. For instance, he said, in November 2013 and 2014 YMCA was part of the November Commemorations through the Ministry of Health, Cancer Association Botswana and the International Men’s Day among others. Ends
