Kirsty Coventry Pledges To Revitalise 'Green Bombers'

Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Kirsty Coventry said that her ministry will reinvigorate the National Youth Service (NYS) programme giving it a whole new look to ensure it meets international best practice.

Speaking to the Portfolio Committee on Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture, Minister Coventry said the programme will target school leavers and youths between the ages of 15 and 35 to equip them with life skills. She said:

The youth service is a program where our youth, specifically for the ministry we will be focusing on out of school youths from the ages of 15 -35 where we will provide them with life education skills, training and workshops.

We are revitalising what was the program, with a completely new program and a way to move forward.

This is being done in many different countries around the world in the US, Israel, Germany, Tanzania and in Zambia, and it works very well.

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The NYS was introduced in 2000 by the then Minister for Gender, Youth and Employment Border Gezi with the first training camp being established in Mount Darwin in 2001.

The “Green Bombers’, as they are derisively called because of their green uniforms, were mostly used to perpetrate violence on opposition supporters ahead of the crucial 2002 Presidential election.

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