Kafue Town is located 44km south of Lusaka, the Zambian Capital. In the 1960’s Kafue was a thriving industrial town with a large nitrogen factory, a train station and a bustling textiles industry; as time passed the nitrogen factory started to lose money and imported second-hand clothing put the textiles industry out of business. Kafue slowly but surely went backwards: facilities, such as the community hall, fell into disrepair; tennis and basketball courts were covered by the overgrowth; paved roads disintegrated; and the public swimming pool became unusable. Kafue once had the amenities of a town in the British Isles but now most are completely gone or in such bad repair that they are hardly utilised. With the fall of industry and the resulting reduction of facilities in Kafue, unemployment, crime and HIV prevalence have all increased.

After discussion with Kafue residents it was noted that many youths do not have a safe place to socialise outside of school. Many youths hang around on the streets of Kafue with nothing to keep them occupied. This boredom has lead to a large percentage of youths turning to anti-social behaviour such as defamation of public property, graffiti, drinking alcohol and taking drugs. The Gazelle Trust believed an alternative pathway could be set up in order to prevent the youths of Kafue making these decisions and in turn started ‘The Gazelle Trust Youth Centres Project’. The first site for this project is Kafue Town and is known as Kafue Youth Centre.

1. To provide a safe place where youths (11-16 year olds) can come and socialise, engage in recreation and learn outside of school hours.
2. To provide activities and materials to develop social skills amongst the youths of Kafue.
3. To provide a citizenship, personal, social and health education curriculum outside of school hours to help develop knowledge in such areas as microfinance, fundraising, governance and health.

1. Youths of Kafue will learn and use skills based around being a good citizen.
2. Youths of Kafue will develop skills useful in adulthood such as managing money and resources.
3. Youths of Kafue will have a safe place to socialise and learn, away from the temptations of partaking in anti-social behaviour such as loitering and taking drugs and alcohol.

Kafue Youth Centre targets 11-16 year olds from any sex or background. After discussions with Kafue residents this was considered a group that is particularly vulnerable to participating in anti-social behaviour. In addition it is important to work with this age range as it is the formative years for a youth, and activities that take place during this period can shape a person’s behaviour for the rest of their lives.

There are a range of activities available at the centre; these include basketball, football, and pool, badminton, playing board games, table football and Frisbee.

The centre also runs a quarterly newsletter which attempts to develop English language ability and report writing skills; this helps youths to think about issues and to express themselves in a constructive manner.

The youth centre has recently started sewing machine lessons and has plans to develop cooking classes.

Tobert Zulu is the current youth manager. As a resident of Kafue he has a good working knowledge of the town’s layout and of its needs. He works hand in hand with trustees from The Gazelle Trust, and other volunteers, to manage the daily setting up and the logistics of the youth centre. In addition he is responsible to mentor and guide the Youth Council (8 elected members of the centre) in developing the centre.

In April 2010, after securing the backing of the local council, the Kafue Youth Centre decided to open a community library to raise funds to support the centre and its ongoing expenditures, which include equipment and repair costs, renovations and a stipend for the youth manager and youth leaders of the centre. At that time the whole district, with a population of 150,000, only had a single small library holding out- dated books and located over an hour away from the youth centre.

Creating the Community Library

A storeroom at the youth centre was identified for the library. We re-plastered and painted the walls, re-concreted the floor, installed new window panes, strengthened the doors and build numerous bookshelves. Furthermore we painted the outside of the entrance, indicating that this was the new community library. The charity 'Family Health Trust', kindly donated 1250 books to the library, including class sets of text books for the community school (based in the same building as the youth centre and library) and students from other schools; a variety of children's literature and novels; books for setting up small businesses; and a range of magazines. The local expatriate community in Zambia also donated a substantial collection of novels to the library.

Making the Youth Centre Sustainable

The library is be open to the whole community and will raise money by charging membership fees and for withdrawing books; Kafue Youth Centre members and students from the attached community school have free access to the books whilst they are within the centre. We have been requested to create a renovate reading and study room where members of the community can come to read in peace and with space to study; something that is not available to most people in their homes. The local council have identified another room in the same building as the library but this also needs to be substantially furnished and renovated before it could be functional.

We anticipate that the youth centre will need continued financial support for at least the next year whilst the library develops and fulfils its potential as the fundraising arm of the centre and the community and local authorities take greater ownership. The local council have expressed great interest in the centre and recently approached us with a view to set up a second youth centre in another area of the district, based on the same Kafue Youth Centre model.