As Jackline Waweru was growing up in Mtwapa, Kilifi County, she saw the effects of drug abuse and prostitution on her peers.
Mtwapa had many entertainment joints, and some teenagers targeted tourists who came to the town. Some of them dropped out of school.
Jacky, as she is commonly known, was disappointed one holiday when she came home from boarding school to find that many of her peers were either married off or involved those vices she disliked.
This led her to advocate for better life choices at the age of 15, and she began having talks with them.
“My friends started talking behind my back when I told them to quit drugs and join nearby schools,” says Jacky.
Jacky and three other girls began meeting in a nearby nursery school to discuss issues concerning them, challenges and possible solutions that would have a positive impact.
When she was 16, Jacky became the go-to adviser on relationship issues despite not having a boyfriend. Her friends opened up to her and she would share her thoughts with them.
She had learnt a lot about relationships and counselling from her friend who owned the nursery school where the girls met. Her friend would also advise her on how to counsel teenagers.
Coupled with this knowledge and reproductive health information learnt in biology and from various books, she would advise her friends.
“When we closed school, I would accompany my cousin to Mtwapa Youth Group (MYG) where they used to meet. They would give me books on life skills and health that I would read,” she says.
Sometimes Jacky would carry the books home and read them with her friends. After a while, the group of four grew to 10 members.
It did not take long before boys in her village also requested to join her group and she became the group leader. Leadership for Jacky was not a new thing as she was a prefect in various capacities from Form One to Form Three.
After completing her secondary school education, she realised she had a passion for community development.
She studied community development and counselling at the Technical University of Mombasa (TUM) between 2012 and 2015.
“I disappointed my father because he had wanted me to do a course that would make me a doctor or engineer,” she says.
But despite the initial hurdle, Jacky pushed on.
And now, at 24 years, she is the health project officer at Safe Community Youth Initiative, a community-based organisation in Mtwapa, which educates young people—mostly girls—on reproductive health.
Jacky was the youngest panellist to represent the youth in this year’s 5th Annual devolution conference in health sectorial meetings.
She is an alumnus of Young African Leadership Initiative Cohort 11 in which only two youth from Mombasa qualified.
Jacky has also taken part in international advocacy at the European Union Parliament in Belgium to discuss commitments Kenya has made with the EU.
Her age does not hinder her from achieving her goals, she says. “As long as you have enough knowledge on an issue and express it confidently, everyone will listen to you.”
Apart from community service, Jacky also runs a business and she aspires to be a diplomat in future.
