Friends of Crosschange Youth Network

Crosschange Youth Network invites you; young leader, activist, social entrepreneur or professional who aspires to bring about unprecedented change in the history of the Kenyan youth to join The Friends of Crosschange by supporting our activities that seeks to empower youth to catalyse positive social change by providing them with skills, contacts, opportunities and a community of like-minded people pursuing the same goals.

If you have training manuals that think can improve our work or electronics that you do not use any more because you have updated to a newer model, here ideas on how you could become part of this historic change;

• Videos, training manuals, other tools: In order to best equip our Trainers, any of these resources would be great, especially if they are about youth activism, social entrepreneurship, gender-equality, climate change, leadership, or related materials on local/global issues.
• Software Programs: Such as MS Project, Photoshop or MS Office. If you are no longer using any of these, they are greatly needed in our work.
• Laptops (and cases): If you have old, unused laptops, our Trainers could use them in their workshops, or volunteers in the office could use them to work more efficiently.
• Digital Cameras: We would like one per field officer to document their journey with the youth in the hard places within the slums of Nairobi and bring awareness to their cause.
• Projectors: We eventually hope to have one for each field officer, to enhance their teaching capabilities.
• Printer cartridges: HP 53 A, LJ 2015 P.
• Video Cameras.
• Phones: to increase communication efficiency in the office and beyond.

If you don’t have any of the above items, monetary donations are welcome as well. You don’t have to worry about your money falling into the wrong hands or being used in the wrong causes since we have traceable ways in which you can invest in any of the Crosschange Youth Network activities.

Here are some ways in which you can help;

Sponsor a trainer: For Ksh. 2000 you can support a field officer for one week to help them cater for their needs as they continue inspire and transform young people in to active change-makers

Other ways you can donate monetarily are

• Ksh. 500 – Pay communication and travel costs for all Volunteer Field Officers for one month.

• Ksh. 1,000 – Contribute towards the expenses involved in running a workshop, creating awareness and inspiring the youth to act on specific local issues in their communities.

• Ksh. 5,000 – You can partially sponsor a one-day workshop within Nairobi.
• Ksh. 10,000 – This can help fund a one day youth for empowerment forum.

We wish you well as you contemplate ways in which you can get involved, Thank You!

Share this:

‘The challenges of our world require a quality of youth;not a time in life but a state of mind,a tempo of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity and the appetite of adventure over the love of these.’

Sen. Robert Kennedy [ Capetown S.A. 1966]

The Law of Pain: Good Management of Bad Experiences Leads to Great Growth

 

How do you usually respond to bad experiences? Do you explode in anger? Do you shrink into yourself emotionally? Do you detach yourself from the experience as much as possible? Do you ignore it?

John McDonnell once said, “Every problem introduces a person to himself.” What an insight! Each time we encounter a painful experience, we get to know ourselves a little better. Pain can stop us dead in our tracks. Or it can cause us to make decisions we would like to put off, deal with issues we would rather not face, and make changes that make us feel uncomfortable. Pain prompts us to face who we are and where we are. What we do with that experience defines who we become.

Novelist James Baldwin commented, “Not every thing that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Often it takes a bad experience for us to face the changes we need to make in our lives. I know that was true for me when it came to my health. As I’ve mentioned before, I experienced a heart attack at age fifty-one. Prior to that, I knew deep down I wasn’t eating right or exercising enough. But I’d never had any health problems, so I just plowed ahead as I always had. But the night I had the heart attack, the excruciating pain I felt in my chest and the belief in that moment that I wasn’t going to see my family again finally got my attention. It made me face the fact that I needed to change the way I was living. You could say I had finally reached a teachable moment. And that is the value of the Law of Pain. It gives us an opportunity to turn our lives around. A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.

Most people don’t think their way to positive change—they feel their way. In their book, The Heart of Change, Harvard Business professor John Kotter and Deloitte Consulting principal Dan Cohen explain, “Changing behavior is less a matter of giving people analysis to influence their thoughts than helping them to see a truth to influence their feelings. Both thinking and feelings are essential, and both are found in successful organizations, but the heart of change is in the emotions.”

When bad experiences create strong feelings in us, we either face the feelings and try to change or we try to escape. It’s the old fight-or-flight instinct. We need to train ourselves to fight for positive changes. How do we do that? By remembering that our choices will lead to either the pain of self-discipline or the pain of regret. I’d rather live with the pain of self-discipline and reap the positive rewards than live with the pain of regret, which is something that can create a deep and continual ache within us.

Athlete and author Diana Nyad says, “I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level. I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers, an often-painful process.” That’s a process Nyad has gone through many times as she trained to break records as a long-distance swimmer. In 1979, she swam non-stop from Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida. It took her two days. Her record has stood for more than thirty years.

The next time you find yourself in the midst of a bad experience, remind yourself that you are on the cusp of an opportunity to change and grow. Whether you do will depend on how you react to your experience, and the changes you make as a result. Allow your emotions to be the catalyst for change, think through how to change to make sure you are making good choices, and then take action.

Source: John Maxwell on Leadership

Welcome!

“I wonder – If young people were actively engaged in all

aspects of society, and thought of themselves as

community leaders, problem-solvers, role models,

mentors and key ‘stakeholders’…how would the world

change?”
– Jennifer Corriero, Founder TakinItGlobal.

Do you want to get involved? Join us.