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Weekly activity update
National Youth Development Trust
May 23, 2012

Life skills training: 30 youths from Robert Sinyoka, St Peters and Pumula underwent a life skills training last week from 17 to 19 May 2012. The three day training workshop was held at the St Peters community hall in peri-urban Bulawayo. Topics covered during the workshop included gender mainstreaming that looked into defining gender, clarifying the difference between gender and sex, various gender roles and responsibilities. The organisation put much emphasis on gender mainstreaming as a means of empowering the trainees to equally participate in community and national development initiatives. The session included role plays that saw young men and women interchanging roles in plays that depict various gender roles in their community. A video footage of the South African drama series Intersexions laid the groundwork for the session on romantic relationships and assertive behaviour.

In discussing HIV/AIDS prevention, stigma, discrimination and living with HIV/AIDS, the young people had the opportunity to listen to a testimony from a young woman living with HIV. She managed to share some facts about the virus and how those who are already HIV positive can live positively. One of the participants, a single mother was moved by the session to the extent that she openly came out to NYDT members of staff about her HIV status and sought assistance in terms of transport to get her baby tested for HIV. The institution has pledged to support her in that regard and link her up with the relevant institutions for more details on how she can live positively with the virus. The final session was on career development and it largely focused on enhancing the entrepreneurial skills of the young people. Most of them were already entrepreneurs although they seemed to underestimate their entrepreneurship skills. Some are already running a poultry project and one of them a soap making project. The youths also received practical training on how to write curriculum vitas and tips for going through a successful job interview.

The training workshop was appreciated by both the participants and the local community leaders who said that the youths in the ward were not exposed to such crucial programmes which aid young people's professional, economic and social growth. As such, they urged the NYDT to widen its reach and carry out more training programmes in the peri urban ward.

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