-At the Mombasa Youth Counseling Center (MYCC)—volunteers working with their Kenyan partners, will be upgrading the HIV lab and the VCT screening center as well as upgrading or renovating the conference hall
-At the Child Development Center (CDC)—K4K activists will be donating new computer sets, purchasing student and teacher desks and tables and providing supplementary school uniforms to scholarship students.
NUTRI VIVA
Similar to problems faced by youth and families in the United States and in many other developed and developing countries, Kuwaiti adults and youth are overweight.
This life-threatening situation has partially to do with the permissiveness of parenting in Kuwait and is also due to the lack of nutritional oversight in households where children are handed over to maids at an early age.
In Kuwait, growth in obesity related problems have also to do with the fact that good nutritional educational role models are lacking in many corners of the land. NUTRI VIVA, founded by Kuwait University students and supported by LOYAC, was set up to counter these bad trends that are leading to an increase in diabetes and other advanced diseases in Kuwait (at a level heretofore not known in this corner of the globe).
Nutrition knowledge and food sciences are underdeveloped in a region of the world that went from great relative poverty to unknown opulence over the last 50 to 60 years. The opulence brought a mass importation of foreign and fast food eating habits in countries with few nutritionists around the Gulf.
NUTRI VIVA is not only interested in health but in the body. That is, the volunteer group is wants to improve the situation in Kuwait in terms of more holistic development. NUTRI VIVA leaders, Dalal and Dalal, speaking at the AWARE center on October 16 just prior to the K4K presentation have with their peers organized at the Department of Family Sciences at Kuwait University a host of orientations for parents and their children.At the AWARE Center, the two Dalals shared slides of education days where both mothers and their children were educated separately.
The children’s orientation was done through fun and games. Dalal and Dalal are also receiving funding and support in producing a kids-educational animated-cartoon with a story line to teach children about nutrition and how to live and eat healthily.
LACK OF GOOD YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS AND ACTIVITIES
In Kuwait, a chronic problem over the past thirty or more years has been the lack of things for young people--of whatever nationality--to be involved in. Indeed, there are, for example, in Kuwait too many clubs who don’t want membership from such-and-such nationality. I was happy to hear that recently two Jordanians had worked this past year on the fund-raising projects of K4K.
As a whole, there are also not enough sports clubs and other activities allowed or promoted in most public and private schools in Kuwait to a significant degree. This great lack leads to a lack in people trained to be leaders through achievement—i.e. not having leaders chosen by which tribe happens to have more voters or representatives on a committee.
Therefor, it is certainly great that such new organizations, like those sponsored under LOYAC since 2003, are beginning to make a dent in the consciousness of Kuwaiti youth. (By the way, according to the LOYAC website, youth from age 15 to 30 years of age can get involved. There are also many mentoring opportunities for volunteers from any nationality.)
Finally, I hope that the LOYAC will be able to get more non-Kuwaiti’s involved, especially as Kuwaiti youth make up less than half the country’s population, and many forces, rules and traditions in society keep the country ghettoized to a great extant. This keeps the land of Kuwait from developing positively as a successful multicultural model, which events of recent history could enable the country to become.
Also, I personally also encourage all Kuwaiti youth to look to the positive examples in LOYAC sponsored organizations. You, too, have opportunities now to become involved and help wealthy Kuwaiti society to make a more positive dent in its self-image and positively shine lights in other corners of the globe.
With rich lands like the U.S. in very troubled economic times, Kuwait and other Gulf states need to become more effective in aiding people-to-people development across our troubled globe. These leaders should focus on cultivate youth as LOYAC does to start leading the way NOW.
