The committee chair led by Elizabeth Kinta Gomez, made this disclosure on Friday at a presser to update journalists about their state of preparedness ahead of the most-anticipated youth gathering in the country.
The week-long event, underway at the Charles Jaw Memorial Academy, began on Sunday 15th to 23rd December 2024 and it is the first time to be hosted by Kanifing Municipality.
NAYCONF as widely referred to is a biennial event that seeks to attract youth across all regions and beyond to share experiences and deliberate on issues affecting their lives and communities.
It is also designed to provide delegates an opportunity to foster relationships, exchange best practices while harnessing their skills and talents and turning opportunities into lasting friendship.
Giving a run-down of the activities undertaken to ensure a successful hosting of the event, Elizabeth Kinta Gomez, chair of the Local Organising Committee KM NAYCONF 2024, revealed that the committee has undertaken a lot of activities geared towards making the event a success.
She hinted that one of such activities is the awareness raising in local communities to explain to people what NAYCONF is all about.
NAYCONF, she added, is a biennial event that started since the First Republic and in those days many would refer to it as ‘Youth Week.’
Youth Week, she added, was an initiative that started with sporting activities attracting people across the country to engage in sporting competition geared towards helping youth to showcase their talents.
The KM LOC chair noted that the initiative took another different format during the Second Republic amalgamating the conference, cultural displays, quiz and debate, academics and public speaking aspect to the event.
This, she added, also witnessed the change of name to National Youth Conference and Festival, geared towards helping youth harness their potentials and exploit their talents.
Besides, she maintained that the conference aspect has brought in a lot of changes in the country and captured in the resolution that youth at the conference prepared and adopted. This highlights their concerns and priorities that is presented to authorities on behalf of all the young people of the country, for actions.
She assured the public that this year’s event being the first to be hosted by Kanifing Municipality will be one of its kind since its inception.
“Being the first time to be hosted in KM, we are not taking it lightly. We have a lot of potential youth people within the municipality. So far as LOC we started our work way back since we expressed our intention or put forward our bid to host the event.”
Already, she informed that they’ve engaged youth across the 19 wards within the municipality in awareness raising activities like talking about the dangers of illicit drug abuse, illegal migration and other burning issues affecting young people.
Speaking earlier on behalf of the Mayor of Kanifing Municipal Council, Kemo Bojang, a Youth Councillor, first thanked the Kanifing Municipal Youth Council through its chair Isatou M Secka for the tireless work they have done in making sure that this forthcoming event becomes a success.
“When she put in the bid for KMC to host the NAYCONF 2024, I believed she knew that it would have come with a lot of challenges, but notwithstanding, she has been able to bear the challenges with her team. And we are glad to come this far in our preparations.”
Councillor Bojang spoke highly of the preparatory steps the KMYC has put up to make this forthcoming event one of its kind.
“We want to assure everyone that Kanifing Municipal Council is committed to making sure we bring all partners on board to see a successful NAYCONF 2024.”
Musa Ndow, co-chair LOC KM NAYCONF 2024 and head of sports for the event, spoke about series of initiatives they have undertaken as a LOC to make this year’s event a resounding success.
“For sports, we are well prepared and at the moment our athletes are well prepared.”
He also spoke about their readiness to sweep the medal tables when it comes to sport as the host of the event.
Isatou M. Secka, Regional Youth Chairperson Kanifing Municipality, expressed similar sentiments.
She spoke about their resource mobilisation and some of the constraints they are facing in their quest to put up a successful event.
While thanking KMC for being the lead sponsor in hosting the event, she also acknowledged that they have been supporting the team since day one.
Baboucarr Mansally, councillor also expressed similar sentiments.
