Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) PLC has today launched a youth empowerment program dubbed Y-Gen that seeks to promote career development of young employees as part of the Company’s diversity mainstreaming agenda.
Launched under the slogan ‘The Future is Now’, KenGen has now moved to register the Y-Gen Youth Empowerment Programme with relevant government bodies and also seek to trademark its logo, becoming the first public institution in Kenya to do so.
Speaking during the virtual launch ceremony today, KenGen Managing Director and CEO, Rebecca Miano, said the youth constitute about 30 per cent of the total staff complement in KenGen making them a key component in the delivery of the company’s growth strategy.
“Y-Gen presents a golden opportunity to groom thinkers, doers, current and tomorrow’s leaders and the Y-Gen bracket are the carriers and implementers of the company’s global aspirations,” she said
Miano went on to state that KenGen was focused on delivering its long-term business strategy anchored on three pillars including value creation, lowering cost of electricity, and increasing generation capacity to boost and drive national development.
She said the youth will be a big part of delivering the robust strategy and therefore the need to have a forum dedicated to addressing the special needs of the young employees within KenGen.
Miano encouraged young people to embrace good practices that will help them grow professionally at a personal level and also warned against harmful practices like alcohol, drug, and substance abuse, indiscipline among others which she said would derail an employee’s progress at work.
KenGen Board of Director Peris Mwangi said that the Y-Gen initiative will help young people grow professionally and realise their full potential.
During the launch, KenGen management unveiled four key pillars of the initiative that include: Y-Gen Strategy Alignment, Y-Gen Brand Development and Outreach, Y-Gen Wellness and Y-Gen Pamoja that would inform the implementation of the forum’s strategy going forward.
As part of alignment of the organisation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs,) KenGen as a company has also mainstreamed other areas including gender through its Pink Energy Initiative, which earlier this year won a gender mainstreaming award issued by the Government of Kenya, through the Ministry of Public Service and Gender.
The Y- Gen launch comes at a time when the world on August 12, 2021, marked the International Youth Day that seeks to bring the youth in the forefront in championing development issues across the world.
By Wangari Ndirangu
