Gone are the days when careers in the beauty industry were viewed with disdain. In the current world, this is one career that is enabling the youth to make a living and be able to feed themselves and their families just like any other white colour job would. There is no shortage of customers for beauty and hair services as both men and women have stepped up and want to step our looking their best.
It is with this in mind that over 20,000 youth are expected to be trained in hairdressing and beauty therapy under the Wezesha Youth program in a bid to grow local small and medium enterprises while supporting the reduction in unemployment among youth. Unemployment is one sad scenario that has of late been leading our youth to despair in life and this need not be the case.
As the lack of office jobs continues to bite, the beauty and hairdressing training program which is a partnership between Godrej and the Council of Governors will be available nationwide as part of the National Government’s agendas for vocational training.
And the program has already been tested. In the last two years, Godrej ran a pilot program where 1000 youths in vocational training centers in Nairobi, Kitui, Trans Nzoia, Migori, Machakos, Kisii and Uasin Gishu counties were trained. Following learnings made in this pilot phase, the Wezesha Youth Program was redesigned for sustainability and scale.
Early this year Godrej launched the program at Chebigen Vocational Training Centre in Kericho and Godrej Managing Director Mr. Rohit Vengurlekar said that the company recognizes that vocation training enables sustainable enterprise development in Kenya.
The next phase of the program’s implementation will target 20,000 youth in 22 counties in ultra-modern designed training labs established to facilitate delivery of quality training.
This program will greatly impact the lives of disadvantaged youth in urban and rural Kenya. We hope that beneficiaries will take this opportunities to earn livelihoods and improve their outlook in life.