MY AYLF STORY by Allan Mwangi

Arch. Allan Mwangi.

I am a split personality kind of a guy. At least that much I have learnt in the few years I have known me. I can thrive in a crowd and have fun in such but I also enjoy my own company. The scales are tilted towards enjoying my own company though. Good music, internet, and a good laptop are enough to keep me holed up in my bedroom for days on end. This fact is one of the many reasons as to why I’m so glad that I’m a member of the Africa Youth Leadership Forum (AYLF).

My involvement in AYLF started from the very birth of the same in Kenya. I am part of a group of eight that sat down one evening to discuss the status of our country soon after the infamous post-election violence and to work on forging a way forward as regards living with each other peaceably and shunning tribalism. In this meeting, the AYLF idea was introduced by my very best friend Gabriel Achayo, who happened to have visited Uganda and managed to attend the launching of the same.

This means that I have seen the growth of AYLF from those eight people on the first meeting to sixteen people on the second meeting in Ufungamano and the eventual explosion to what we are currently experiencing. All through the process, I had no doubt that we are heading somewhere and the fact that we were all friends trying to be even better friends made it easier for me to engage.

AYLF has grown to be one of the important pillars of my life in line with career, service to God, studies and family in no particular order. It fulfills a need in me that most of the other pillars cannot. The kind of mentorship that we have managed to experience both in receiving and giving is incomparable. Mentorship to me basically means walking with someone in their day to day life and helping them avoid mistakes you probably have already made or know about and being a shoulder to lean on when necessary. There is a lot of potential out there that goes to waste simply because someone did not get a hand to hold them and simply listen to them.

I have not taken up mentees specifically but am happy to see what AYLF has been to my two cousins; Monicah and Monique. I believe that campus life offers us opportunities to carve out a niche for ourselves in life. I know that being in AYLF has made it easier for these two lovely ladies to enjoy life positively and make new friends, friends that ultimately have nothing but good intentions. I see the joy in them and I confirm in a very personal way, that this idea was a noble one.

On the larger scale, the presence of AYLF in the many campuses and the engagement we have with student leaders have been very fruitful. The things we teach them and the values we instill are quite helpful especially due to the fact that most of the students are quite young. I believe that servant leadership and leadership by example - two of the major principles that we extol coupled with following the person of Jesus gives us great chances of affecting leadership in this country, positively so.

My initial commitment to AYLF was as simple as I make every other commitment. I planned to be there. 10 years down the line I can hardly imagine the heights we have climbed. And my commitment remains. I plan to be there.