Youth Mentorship and Empowerment Workshop Series – Peer Knowledge Transfer

Youth Mentorship and Empowerment Workshop Series: Peer Knowledge Transfer

Digital transformation has greatly impacted our everyday lives especially for young people. Digital tools including the internet are increasing part of young people’s culture, having access at school and at homes, for schoolwork, games, social networking among others. Young people from poor backgrounds demonstrate agency in the way the find ways to circumvent the digital access gap to play a role in the digital society. Our earlier research on digital access in Cameroon found that they resort to the easiest and least costly means available such as after school programs and using cheap mobile phones to access low internet consuming mobile applications.

A wide digital access gap is a major challenge for young people in Africa. Limited digital infrastructure, unreliable internet and electricity supply among other things deprives them from realizing their full potentials using the technology.

In our continuous effort to bridge the digital access gap and create opportunities for young people to develop themselves through technology, our team initiated the Peer Knowledge Transfer project under the Youth Mentorship and Empowerment program.

The aim is to give these young beneficiaries a chance to learn a skill and pass it on to their peers through onsite sessions, where they get to share their knowledge.

We had our first edition taught by Gideon, a 15-year-old beneficiary at SODEI. Through him, others got to learn about creating videos using a video editing and creation app. They all had the opportunity to put what they learnt into practice at the end of the teaching exercise.