OUR SERVICES

Youths Against Disasters (YADs) strategies primarily involves hazard identification, vulnerability analysis and risk assessment of the community guided by the Sendai Framework of Action four priority areas which include:

DISASTER RISK REDUCTION

Disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risk through systematic efforts to analyze and manage the casual factors of disasters, including through reduce exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability an improve preparedness for adverse effects.

This shift in approach from disaster response to disaster risk reduction has been occasioned by the fact that society can't be without the occurrence of hazards due to natural processes and human activities. 

Youths Against Disasters (YADs) strategies primarily involves hazard identification Vulnerability analysis and risk assessment of the community guide by the Sendai Framework of Action, four priority areas which include:

a) Understanding disaster risk

Youths Against Disasters (YADs) carries out hazard mapping and vulnerability analysis and encourages the communities to develop a culture of prevention as culture dictates how people perceive the risk and their motivation to enhance resilience. Based on the risk assessment and the understanding of the risk, we create awareness through training and workshops, forge accountability by encouraging the community to hold anyone to account for any activity that that has an effect on the environment, and empower individuals and thus we increase their resilience and enhance their well being.

b) Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk

 The government of Kenya has a responsibility of protecting the life and property of the people through the use of legal instruments like public policies that consist of a set of conditions that guide actions in the society. YADs, coordinate with the National Disaster Management Unit (NDMU), the National Disaster Operation Centre (NDOC) and all stakeholders in disaster management for effective and efficient management of disasters in Kenya. 

c) Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience

The local communities in Kenya are usually reluctant to take initiatives that enhance preparedness especially in places that have been affected by disasters on an annual basis and YADs encourages non structural measures of disaster risk reduction like community participation in preventive projects through empowerment to effectively be involved in shaping their cause of action and enhance resilience.

d) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response.

Youths Against Disasters ensures that capacities are in place to respond and recover from disasters. This is achieved through training and workshops to the local communities, creating awareness about hazard risk and the introduction of preventive technology. Each and every community in Kenya is unique in terms of location and the hazards prevalent in the areas although there are other hazards that are national in nature for example HIV and AIDS.


CAPACITY BUILDING

Emergency preparedness is dependent on the capacity of a given community or organization and it means more than just technical competence or the availability of sufficient financial and material resource. 

Capacity building as an approach envisioned in the Youths Against Disasters (YADs) strategy involves developing skills, organizational structure and the availability of practical support to enable the development of skills and structures with the objective of strengthening and preparing to prevent and mitigate the impacts of disasters if and when they strike.

YADs through its training firm Kenafric Consulting has made tremendous strides in the community capacity building among the youths, women groups and churches. Trainings have been organized for these groups in areas of disaster management, first aid skills, fire disaster management, crowd control and conflict management and environmental science through financial support from other organizations and well wishers.

HIV AND AIDS 


HIV and AIDS is one of the most destructive disease human kind has ever faced with approximately 35 million people currently living with HIV worldwide. Approximately 75% of HIV cases are spread through unprotected penetrative sex with an infected partner and the time from infection to AIDS varies between individuals and depends on many factors like age and the body immune system. The rapid spread of HIV among the prime ages of 15-49 years is likely to affect the productivity of the nation as majority of the Kenyan population is under 45 years and are in the most sexually active periods.

There is no cure for HIV and AIDS at this moment in time, however, a variety of treatments are available that can keep symptoms at bay and improve the quality of life of those who have already developed symptoms. Kenya declared HIV and AIDS a national disaster in 1999, fifteen years after the first clinical case was reported and since then, the national prevalence rate is currently 6% with approximately 1.6 million people living with HIV in Kenya. Annually there are 88,620 new infections among adults and 12,940 new infection among children and young women aged 15-24 have an especially high risk of acquiring HIV due to gender inequalities and low levels of HIV knowledge among the populations.

Young people in Kenya need accurate and adequate knowledge about HIV prevention to make informed choices on sexual behaviour. The comprehensive knowledge about HIV prevention among young people in Kenya is below 5% and Youths Against Disasters raises awareness on HIV prevention among the youths through trainings and workshops to volunteer youths outside schools, youths in secondary schools and other organized groups. Yads encourages delay in sex debut as a key strategy for reducing the risk of HIV infection, being faithful to one partner, the consistent and accurate use of condom especially among those youths with multiple partners and HIV counselling and testing among other initiatives to minimize the HIV prevalence rates among the youths and the entire national population.

SUBSTANCE  & DRUG ABUSE

A psychoactive substance is something that people take to change the way they feel, think or behave. Substance and drug abuse among the youths in Kenya is a major challenge to the government, parents and all stakeholders that require urgent mitigation measures. It has reached an alarming stage where the youths are so much involved in anti-social behaviours that have occasioned an increase in the number of violence, hopelessness and death in many secondary schools and institutions of higher learning in the country. There is also the linkage between substance and drug abuse and the spread of HIV and AIDS. Nearly 90% of the Kenyan youths have experimented with either licit or illicit alcohol, tobacco, bang, heroin, cocaine etc.

 

Youths Against Disasters (Yads) in collaboration with the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse and other stakeholders in the fight against substance and drug abuse, has adopted an intervention that encompasses comprehensive education for long term empowerment of the youths especially among those in secondary schools and those who have just left institutions of learning to counter substance and drug abuse.
Youths at an early stage of substance and drug taking have benefited immensely from the provisions of early prevention and intervention services to help them stop and live normal lives. Yads has achieved this through guidance and counselling, creating awareness, forming forums and antidrug campaigns and empowering the youths to come up with self help projects like solid waste management within the estates