Life skills for youth offered at Queens & Kings Club

RUSSO LUMA | Thursday May 20, 2010 00:00

Queens and Kings Club has a membership of single people aged between 16 and 29 years old and was founded by a number of people including Susan Nyeku, a professional counselor and psychologist.

Nyeku says the club promotes abstinence among members and is biblically inspired as it grooms the youth into having healthy, solid marriages in the face of a growing divorce rate.

'The club is not for married people, but for the youth who are in relationships, in courtship or who are thinking of starting a relationship. We teach them how to choose partners, how to know if they have met the right partners, how to build relationships, when to start a relationship and how to deal with issues of relationships and marriage,' said Nyeku.

The club also teaches members how to keep marriage lively and exciting all the time.  Nyeku said healthy relationships and marriages can only exist if lovers and spouses are responsible people who know which behavioural patterns build or destroy relationships and marriages. 

'We teach them how to live their lives, which basically means giving them life skills. We foster positive behaviour.We talk young people out of drinking alcohol, having multiple concurrent partners and so on,' Nyeku said. Nyeku described the response from the youth and teachers in schools as positive. She said institutions like Marobela Brigade, Ba Isago College and schools like Mater Spei, Tabitha and Francistown Senior School sometimes invite them to talk to students. Positive results have especially been noted at Marobela Brigade where there are remarkable changes in certain students' behaviour.

Nyeku cited a case in which one student who abused alcohol stopped drinking completely and started going to church soon after their intervention. 'Some of the youth come here heart-broken because they have been dumped by their partners.  We counsel them and show them that it is not the end of the world.

They can still find the right partners who will love them.'  She said that some of the cases that they have to deal with are of sexually abused children. She gave an example of one girl who approached them and related how she was raped by relatives and neighbours. The club also handles issues of teenage pregnancy where girls are chased away from home by their parents.