Somali Youth Focus (SYF) is a nationwide Non-Profit Youth Organization that empowers youth to lead productive and transformed lives through: training in life skills; counselling and mentoring; creating forums for dialogue and advocacy; patriotism and entrepreneurship.  At Somali Youth Focus, we envision “ United Empowered, Healthy and Focused Youth working to restore and revive hope, national pride and patriotism”inspired by the founding fathers of our indepedence ''the somali youth league''.

 

Our vision was born out of necessity at time when the circumstances surrounding youth welfare in Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular has deteriorated and youths were exposed to different kinds of insults and hostilities including manipulation, child soldier, rape, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, lack of access to health facilities, hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and of course wars.

 

In line with our vision, we strive to become a hub for the youth, providing credible and timely information on youth related issues in the country. We will also become a Centre for policy dialogue, a leading Centre and a reference point for the young people in the country and increase our strategic partnerships and collaborative linkages with youth working groups.  We address issues of policy advocacy, economic empowerment, skills development, health status and livelihood improvement as well leadership and career choices for young people in the country.

 

We started as a group of youth volunteer in 2009 where different young professionals and activists carried out vigorous situation assessment in mainly south and central regions and pilot situation analysis in other regions of the country such as puntland and Somaliland. We held different consultative meetings with different youth stakeholders and youth representatives and regional authorities such as transitional federal government at that time, puntland and Somaliland authorities.

In our assessment we found out that there was an urgency need for a uniform youth representatives that can represent the interests of youths and attend to the youth grievances that was and still a widespread problem among Somali youths.

 

In 2010 we gathered youth assembly compressed of Youth Professionals, Intellectuals, Scholars, Politicians Entrepreneurs, Doctors and Lawyers in Hotel Nasa Hablot Mogadishu were we announce the birth of Somali Youth Focus.  Since then we made a significant progress using limited local resources.

 

we now have a fully established nationwide youth network reaching out to the youths  we are focused on youth empowerment, awareness creation, compiling and collecting  youth information, creation of youth assemblies and youth organs, we have visited and have representatives in Mogadishu, kismanyo, badao, beledweyn garawe, bosaso and kalkao.

This website is one of the critical channels we expect to use in fulfilling our mandate of reaching out to the youth in the country. We appreciate the importance of technology in transforming our communities and disseminating information in ways and means beyond the traditional media sources.

 

I am confident that the website will provide a platform for dialogue, discussion and feedback from the youth who are our main target audience. I therefore invite you to participate through contributing to topics on the discussion board, on our face book pages as well as the online question and answer page.

 

Your feedback will increase youth participation in our programs as well as ensuring the relevance of our programs. We will continue to review our program focus areas to ensure that there are in tandem with the needs and aspirations of many young people.

 

As we strive for better service delivery, we appreciate the importance of the support, participation and involvement of all our partners and stakeholders  as we hugely depend on well-wishers and our own free will to contribute and impact on youth welfare and make a positive change in the lives of youth.  I therefore take this opportunity to invite you to join and support Somali patriotic youth network in attaining the vision of “An Empowered, Healthy and Focused Youth”

 

 

ABDULAHI DHIBLAWE 

-Executive Director