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president
and also introduce a few students who are going to just talk about the program.
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Thank you very much, Your Excellency. Allow me to stand on the protocols observed. And because Gonga has not spoken, allow me to just mention of him. Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Kenya, Dr. William Samoei Ruto. Your Excellency, the Cabinet Secretaries and PSs that are here.
Our dignitary and your distinguished guest, ladies and gentlemen. God is good. All the time. And all the time. Your Excellency, we are very grateful as our patron, having given us this opportunity here today to be able to come and celebrate the remarkable achievement of 1,252 young Kenyans who have attained the President's Award Gold level. This achievement reflects exceptional dedication, perseverance, and excellence.
Your Excellency, to be able to earn a Gold Award, the young people have gone through voluntary service, skills development, a week-long residential project that involves challenging expedition in unfamiliar environment. The award level is the highest achievement of the President's Award and it represents sustained commitment, maturity, and leadership.
Your Excellency, allow me to briefly give you a highlight of the impact and the transformational impact of this program. Since 1966, Your Excellency, we have 1 million young people that have participated in the program. Many are now active adults contributing meaningfully in our sectors and our key sectors in our country.
Currently, more than 148,000 young people are engaged in the program in 1,800 institutions nationwide. This, Your Excellency, demonstrates a strong demand for structured non-formal education.
In just the last four years, participants have been able to deliver 4.5 million hours of community service. This translates to over 187,000 days of service to our nation. For us, Your Excellency, it is about measurable, sustainable impact that transforms young people into responsible, productive citizens.
Your Excellency, the young people we honor today are the citizens who will shape tomorrow. Through the President's Award, we impact young people with integrity, service, and resilience. Many of our alumni go ahead to become innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders in our communities.
They also form part of the pool of volunteers who support the growth and development of the award program nationwide. The same young people will confidently access opportunities such as the government opportunity program using the capital not only to start enterprises but to create jobs and contribute to the nation's growth. This, Your Excellency, are the young people who will help you achieve the Singapore dream.
Your Excellency, you can see there already, Your Excellency. For us, Your Excellency, it is about impact. Ensuring young people are not only empowered with resources but are also equipped with the values and mindset to succeed. As the program is providing capital, the President's Award will ensure a strong pipeline of value-driven, resilient, and ambitious young people equipped to succeed.
In conclusion, Your Excellency, I would like to appreciate and to express our deepest appreciation for ensuring that you personally celebrate and award these outstanding young people today. Asante.
Your Excellency, allow me to now invite the two young people together with the leader of an award center to be able to give you a snippet of how this program is done so that you can be able to appreciate the impact it has in their life. Allow me to invite the lady from St. Augustine. Thank you.
Come.
Okay.
Good morning, Mr. President. And all protocols observed. My name is Amani Juki, a student in my final year at St. Austin's Academy in Nairobi. Standing here today as a Gold Award recipient is an honor I do not take lightly.
Not just because of the certificates we've earned, although that's definitely an added bonus being here today, but because of the journeys behind them, the moments that stretched us, tested us, and pushed us far beyond what we thought we were capable of.
Through the award, I've learned that some of the most meaningful lessons don't always happen within classroom walls. Over the adventurous journeys and tiresome hikes that got us to this qualification, I've played the roles of a navigator, a group leader, and a first aider.
Roles that called for responsibility, pressure, and came with more than a few wrong turns. But they also taught me how to work with others, how to remain resilient when things don't always go to plan, and perhaps most importantly, how to remain patient, especially when my group was convinced we were somehow reading the map upside down.
But the memory that stays with me most is from our residential project in Kajiado County. We built a fence for Landoko Primary School, a school caught in the middle of a wildlife corridor. For years, the community longed for a perimeter wall, and through the award, we were able to help make that possible.
These experiences have changed me. But perhaps what struck me most wasn't the fence, but the people. They welcomed us with laughter and football games played with balls made of socks. We didn't have much. Yet, I did not feel as though we lacked. And in that moment, I realized something.
They say you must walk a mile in a man's shoes to truly understand his life. But let me tell you, for me, it didn't even take 10 footsteps to start counting my own blessings. The things we often take for granted, education, resources, opportunity, they maximize it so little. Just imagine what they could achieve with a fraction of what we often waste or overlook.
The award has pushed me beyond my comfort zone, teaching me how to lead and how to follow, how to serve with empathy and impact. It's changed all of us into the adults, professionals, and leaders our home Kenya will depend on tomorrow.
This moment is proof of grit, proof of late nights, early mornings, and choosing to keep going when it may have been easier to just quit. And for that, each and every one of us here today can hold our heads up high. We've earned this moment. We've done it.
Your Excellency, my one humble request is that you continue to support and expand the award so that more young people across our nation, in every county, every school, can have the same chance we've had, can have the honor to be where we are today.
It is often said that a society grows great when young people plant trees whose shade they may never sit in. Through the award, we've learned to serve beyond ourselves, to build, to give, and to invest in a future bigger than any one of us. And in doing so, we are laying the foundations for the Kenya we are to inherit and the Kenya we are already shaping. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Jockey, the gentleman from Jereuni School. Okay, come.
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Santis Sana. Finally, allow me to invite Madame Justina.
Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Kenya, Honorable Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, distinguished guests, President Award participants, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Professor Justina Wasimi Momb. I'm the in charge of Shimola Bal Institution and Boys Education Center. Shimola Boys Education is Bal Institution and Boys Education Center is one of the four juvenile facilities in Kenya Prison Service, and our leader, the Commissioner General of Prisons, Mr. Arandu, who is present here today at Shimobostol.
We see beyond the offense. We see young men with potential, dreams, and the capacity to rebuild their lives. Through President's Award Kenya, we have witnessed transformation from hopelessness to purpose, from confinement to confidence. Worth noting is that the President's Award Kenya has become one of the most transformative tools in correctional programming.
Through it, we have witnessed young men behind bars rebuild character, regain discipline, rediscover identity, and reimagine their future. Your Excellency, to be specific, the PA Kenya program empowers our youth through its four key pillars, namely voluntary service, where our young people participate in environmental care, mentorship, brass band engagement with the community through our social responsibility work within Mombasa, Kilifi, and Kwale counties, and skills development.
As an institution, we receive boys in conflict with the law. The boys are aged between 15 and 18 years, and they are committed to receive correctional training and education. As an institution, we have three platforms. We have formal education, the CBE, we have the 844 system where we have form threes and form fours. We also have vocational training with 20 NITA-supported programs, life skills, and other skills.
We also have a digital program where we train our inmates on coding, robotics, graphic design, web development for their lawful livelihoods and self-reliance upon release. Three, on physical recreation, our boys train in different disciplines for their emotional regulation and teamwork. Worth mentioning is that the institution has a three-in-one multi-purpose court where we host basketball, volleyball, and lawn tennis in one.
Our boys have done well in football, and they have also participated with other schools during competitions and adventurous journeys. We have encouraged our boys through leadership skills to participate in hiking so that they complete their journey as awardees, and some of them have been here and have been awarded as Gold awardees.
These pillars are anchored in our trauma-informed juvenile correction model, and they have been supported in participating in other activities, including climate action, where our boys have applied the three Rs of waste management: recycle, reuse, and reduce, to create safe spaces within our institution.
The institution has an eco-friendly library, a digital booth made from recycled and reused high-carbon plastic materials which would have caused a lot of damage to the environment if they were not used in a proper way. So that is our program under climate action. Again, our boys nurture over 10,000 trees within Shimolia Boston.
And then lastly, Your Excellency, I wish to call for greater support and recognition as follows: that we request the government agencies to formally recognize PA Kenya participation during reintegration through priority in youth employment programs for our boys after release.
We also urge employers and county governments to give these reformed young men and women from correctional facilities a chance of dignified work related to the skills learned in order to break the cycle of stigma and recidivism. God bless Kenya. God bless our nation. Thank you.
Your Excellency, as you've heard, that's just a snippet of what we do in this program, and I believe these are the formative years of our young people. We thank you for your patronage, and we look forward to more. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madame CEO. One more round of applause for Margaret Kyora. Thank you. Thank you, Your Excellency. Next, allow me to invite the Principal Secretary Youth Affairs, Fiki Jacobs, to also make some remarks, and as he comes, also to recognize the Duke of Edinburgh Trustee Moat who is present with us.
Thank you, Your Excellency the President, Dr. William Samoei Ruto, Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, and Your Excellency, with appreciation, the patron of the President's Award Kenya. Cabinet Secretary, the Honorable Salva, colleague Principal Secretaries here present. Your Excellency, we're also enjoined by a number of CEOs, chairmen, directors of different government agencies.
Dear parents, teachers, institutional heads, comrades and friends, and the students. Good morning once again. My name is Fiki Jacobs, the Principal Secretary, privileged to serve at this level of my life in the State Department for Youth Affairs and Creative Economy in the administration of His Excellency Dr. William Ruto. Your Excellency, allow me first and foremost to recognize the presence of colleagues who are here.
Your Excellency, this program is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education. We extended an invitation to our colleagues who serve different state departments within the Ministry of Education, and they are all here present. Your Excellency, we have Professor BTO who is the PS for Basic Education.
We have Dr. Esther Muria, PS for TVET. We have Dr. Inyangala, PS for Higher Education. And Your Excellency, appreciating a presidential directive that you gave in previous engagements around public service, Your Excellency, we also extended an invitation to the PS for Public Service and Human Capital Development, Dr. Amuna, who is also present.
With that, Your Excellency, I want to once again thank you so immensely for hosting us at State House, Your Excellency, for this event. We honestly do not take it for granted. And Your Excellency, as a Principal Secretary for the Youth Affairs and Creative Economy, I wish and I hope I'm justified, Your Excellency, to conclude that clearly from your calendar, Your Excellency, from the beginning of this year 2026, clearly is the year of the youth and the children of this country. And thank you so much, Your Excellency.
Your Excellency, we do not take your mentorship for the young people of this country, who are the conscience of a country today and the potential leaders of today and tomorrow, for granted. Your Excellency, talking about volunteerism, Africa as a continent was founded on the principled schools of Ubuntu, and as years go by, Your Excellency, Africa as a continent and Kenya in particular has continued to engage across the board beyond the boundaries of our communities, beyond the boundaries of our tribes, and as such, Your Excellency, communitarianism still has a place in the society of Kenya today.
Your Excellency, with a lot of generational transitions that we experience, Africa as a continent through the lenses of many countries like Kenya, Your Excellency, has continued to be defiantly communal and unapologetically youthful. Your Excellency, the young people seated before you, Your Excellency, is a clear proof, Your Excellency, that while other continents are battling aging crisis, Kenya is blessed to have a large part of our population being the young people, Your Excellency, and we appreciate that you, Your Excellency, have extended a platform of mentorship and to guarantee continuity and growth of our country.
Your Excellency, volunteerism is a better breeding ground for communal resilience, for love, for empathy, for communitarianism. Your Excellency, and the activities, the actions of these young men and women who have been mentored through this program that you graciously patronage, Your Excellency, is a better proof that this platform acts as a springboard for national roles, for continental roles, and even regional roles for some of these ladies and gentlemen are seated here.
In my conclusion, I wish to appeal to each and every student in this program here present and beyond that may we continue to hold each other's hand. May we continue to embrace each other. May we always find it in our heart and minds to always be the true face of Kenya. May we, with the exposure that we have had, continue to bring to breed positive thinking, positive alignment of our thinking. May we continue to breed mind education, the spirit of volunteerism, and always wish to see Kenya a better place. I am sure this program makes you better ambassadors of our country, and I pray that through all of us here present, Kenya shall continue to be a better country for us, and this platform will bolster, steer you to take charge of responsibilities and roles that you are prepared the ground for.
With that, Your Excellency, allow me to invite to stage the Honorable Salim Vurya, the Cabinet Secretary for Youth Affairs, Creative Economy, and Sports to come and give a statement. Thank you so much.
