Former President Uhuru Kenyatta has revealed that his decision to invest in mentoring young people was inspired by the challenges he encountered while serving as Gatundu South MP, where a majority of the concerns raised by residents revolved around access to education.
Speaking in a video shared on the Jubilee Party TikTok account, Uhuru said repeated encounters with parents struggling to keep their children in school convinced him that many young people only needed an opportunity to unlock their potential.
“This programme actually, I started when I was a Member of Parliament here in Gatundu South,” Uhuru said.
“That was out of just going around and meeting constituents. You started to see that 60 to 70 per cent of the issues that you were being confronted with was, ‘My child is not in school, my child is not in school, school fees’.”
He said he initially focused on helping a small number of students before expanding the initiative after witnessing the impact education was having on their lives.
“I started then, beginning by asking myself, how many kids can I help?” he said.
According to the former president, following the progress of some of the beneficiaries over the years demonstrated that young people can thrive when given access to opportunities.
“Looking at some of those young fellows and the progress that they had made, people who did not have an opportunity, once given the opportunity, started to blossom,” he said.
Uhuru said as the programme grew, it became apparent that education alone was not sufficient to prepare young people for life and leadership.
He said organisers began identifying gaps that required intervention beyond the classroom, prompting the introduction of mentorship and life-skills training.
“The purpose now, as we started seeing these kids grow, we started to see the gaps in the individuals because we were following up on them,” he said.
“So we started to realise that we need to instil a sense of hope, a sense of being, a sense of belonging and a sense of responsibility. That is when the idea came that everybody should have that opportunity to be counselled, to be guided and to be mentored because classroom education is one thing, life skills are another.”
Uhuru also spoke about the county-to-county exchange programme, which he said was designed to expose young people to different cultures and strengthen national cohesion.
He explained that participants were required to spend time living with families from other parts of the country in order to better understand Kenya’s diversity.
“When it came to the county-to-county programme, that was my programme. I insisted that it is important,” he said.
“Any participant in our programme must be willing to at least once a year move from their homes and live with another member from another part of the country so that you begin to understand and appreciate each other.”
He said the initiative was intended to help young people challenge stereotypes and develop firsthand experiences of communities different from their own.
“There is something beautiful about our diversity so that you do not listen to the stories that are being told there in the village. You see for yourself,” Uhuru said.
“You start to demystify all these myths that people follow.”
The former president said he closely follows feedback from participants and host families, describing their experiences as one of the most rewarding aspects of the programme.
“I love to hear what are the reactions of the people who leave. Not just your reactions, but the reactions of the parents of where you have gone to,” he said.
Uhuru further expressed hope that the Inuka programme would continue to expand its reach, saying empowering families and communities is just as important as empowering individuals.
“I would love to see the Inuka programme being able to grow as well,” he said.
“That programme of empowering families, empowering communities, is just as fundamental as empowering the individual because the whole objective is to have people who are empowered and becoming meaningful contributors to our society.”
