Kambi Moto Youth and Kids (KYAK) was established in 2018 and registered in 2019. We are a youth and children-led platform supporting 65 participants (14 members and 51 kids) based in a village within Kambimoto, Huruma informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.
Our mission is to empower youth and children in our community by addressing poverty, unemployment, and fostering self-reliance through arts, sports, entrepreneurship, and knowledge management.
Waste management in our community faces significant challenges due to population growth and inadequate infrastructure. Every day, we see the impact of plastic waste clogging our drainage systems and causing flooding in our community. Despite the significant solutions to this problem, we noticed that children are left out in the proper plastic waste management practices. The challenge is to create an incentive-driven system that encourages children to actively participate in collecting and recycling household waste.
To address the problem, we launched an incentive called Taka for Education in October 2024. The project aims to address key waste management challenges, to minimise waste found along the roadside and in drains, while helping kids get stationery for school use. We are making good progress. So far, we managed to collect 116kgs of recyclable waste from 30 kids within a span of two months. Taka for Education works as follows:
Step 1: Kids collect plastic and paper waste from their households/schools
Volunteers identify plastic and paper waster in their respective homes/schools. They then store the waste, sometimes setting it aside in designated recycling dustbin, until it reaches a considerable amount in terms of kilograms. Once this has been achieved, the students bring the plastic waste to the community hall container for weight measurement, data entry and storage.
Step 2: Waste is weighed, converted to points and then recorded in our database
The data entry involves registering the student names and recording the amount of plastic weight. The number of kilograms then earn them points.
Step 3: Waste is stored and then transported and sold to local aggregator
The plastic collection stored is then sold to recycling companies.
Step 4: From our records, the students can then redeem their points to stationery
Money earned is then divided in accordance to the student’s points earned and used to buy stationary such as exercise books, pens, calculators etc.
We plan to expand to other communities, and our target is at least 1 000 student volunteers enrolled in the project with a maximum 0.5 tons of waste per week. We are also projecting to have a revenue of Ksh. 25,000 per week from the sales of the plastic and paper waste. We also want to create at least 10 jobs for the youth in our community. Our marketing strategy is through social media where we will be posting our activities and our products, conferences, our partners, and community leaders. We encourage all SDI Network members to follow the Kambi Moto Youth and Kids Collective Facebook page for updates.
