Have you ever entered the community looking for information and leave carrying a question instead?
That was our experience in Tassia.
We had gone out to understand what was happening in the community, especially around young people, women and opportunities. Our first stop was the Chief’s office. We had hoped to speak with the Chief, but he was busy.
Still, the visit turned out to be valuable.
We met two Community Health Volunteers, Irene and Lucy. And Irene gave us something we did not expect: a window into how opportunity is experienced at community level.
She told us that, from what she has observed, many of the programmes and opportunities targeting young people and women tend to be concentrated around Embakasi rather than Tassia.
On paper, that may sound like a simple geographical issue.
But when you listen to it from inside a community, it becomes something much bigger.
It becomes a question of access.
It becomes a question of who gets seen.
And eventually, it becomes a question of who gets the opportunity to develop their potential.
Then we met Bushman.
We asked him a simple question:
“How are you?”
“I am not okay. I am hungry.”
That answer stayed with us.
There was no complicated explanation. No long story. Just hunger.
That small interaction forced us to look at everything Irene had told us differently.
Because when we talk about “youth empowerment,” it is very easy to talk about training, entrepreneurship, leadership and skills development.
But what happens when someone is thinking about their next meal?
What happens when the available work is mostly casual and manual?
Bushman told us that the kinds of jobs he and many of his friends find include construction work, fetching water, helping people move things and other forms of manual labour.
There is dignity in work. But the question is whether young people have enough pathways to move beyond simply finding the next available casual job.
We also heard about the limited presence of organisations working consistently in the area.
Irene mentioned previous interventions, including DREAMS, as well as current efforts such as Sis and Bros and the Good News Mission’s We Can Academy.
The We Can Academy particularly caught our attention.
Young people can register for KSh 1,000 and take a course for three months. When we spoke with Festus, who is involved with the programme, he told us that beauty and cosmetics are among the most popular areas of interest.
Finance, on the other hand, is one of the least sought-after.
That detail made us pause.
Because sometimes we assume that if opportunities are available, people will automatically choose what we think they need.
But people make choices based on what they see, what they understand, what they believe can generate income and what feels immediately relevant to their lives.
Perhaps the question, therefore, is not simply:
“What training should we give young people?”
Perhaps we should also ask:
“What opportunities do young people believe are available to them?”
And:
“What would make a different future feel realistic?”
Another thing struck us.
The community does not appear to have a dedicated social or community hall where young people can regularly gather, learn, organise and engage.
That may seem like a physical infrastructure issue.
But spaces matter.
A community space can become a classroom, a meeting point, an incubation centre, a place for mentorship, a place for young people to organise, or simply somewhere to belong.
Without such spaces, young people will still find somewhere to spend their time.
The question is where.
And doing what.
Yet Tasia also reminded us that communities are not simply waiting for someone to come and rescue them.
On our way back, we noticed a salon with an unusual name: BM Cerebral Palsy Salon.
Naturally, we became curious.
We walked in and met Vanessa, who explained that the salon is connected to the BM Cerebral Palsy Foundation, founded by Christine Mutola.
The salon is an income-generating project, with proceeds supporting people with cerebral palsy, including their monthly diaper needs and other necessities.
That encounter gave us another perspective.
There are already people building solutions within the community.
There are Community Health Volunteers.
There are people creating training opportunities.
There are organisations supporting young girls.
There are social enterprises generating income for vulnerable groups.
There are people trying.
The challenge is that these efforts can sometimes exist as individual islands in a much larger sea of need.
And perhaps this is where the conversation about human capacity becomes important.
Empowering people is not only about giving them knowledge.
There is need to create the conditions in which that knowledge can become useful.
A young person can be trained in entrepreneurship, but they still need access to markets.
Someone can learn financial literacy, but they still need an income from which to build.
A woman can acquire a skill, but she still needs customers, networks, capital and an environment that allows her business to grow.
And a community can have talented, ambitious people, but if opportunities consistently pass them by, potential can remain potential for a very long time.
That is what we kept thinking about as we left Tasia.
Bushman’s hunger was not necessarily a complete picture of the community.
Neither was Irene’s observation.
Neither was the popularity of beauty courses.
Neither was the absence of a community hall.
But together, they formed a picture worth paying attention to.
The question we left with was not simply, “What is wrong with Tasia?”
It was:
“What could become possible if the people already trying to create change had more opportunities, resources, connections and support?”
Because sometimes a community does not lack potential.
Sometimes it lacks pathways.
And there is a big difference.
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