Over 2000 youths rescued from drugs, suicide

Latwell Nyangu

Over 2000 youths have been rescued from potential threats of drug abuse and suicides through self-empowering skills projects.

Youths in Chitungwiza have all the reasons to be thankful for Teen Rescue Mission (TRM), a youth-based organisation which aims to empower young people.

The organisation carries out different projects, including poultry, welding, dress making, among other self-empowering projects.

TRM director, Abraham Matuka said they are working flat out to rescue young people from drugs.

“We have assisted over 1600 youths from our database from the time we started operating in Chitungwiza in 2021, but going beyond.

“Overall, we have assisted more than 2000 youths where we offer awareness, educational programmes, reaching out in communities and churches on a based door to door.

“Most of the youths are engaged in drugs due to depression, and to counter that, we have been providing counselling, talking to them since we noticed that there is a lot of mental illness.

“We try our best to offer professional counselling.”

Matuka said, many youths have been equipped with skills.

“The main aim has been offering life skill courses where we have managed to take over 1000 youths to Young Africa, where they were doing different courses to empower themselves.

“It has also come to our attention that many youths want to do life skills, and as a result, we managed to secure a piece of land in Seke.

“The land is used for projects including dress making, welding, motor mechanics, and poetry, among others.

“We enrolled more than 60 youths of which some of whom are now on attachment in their different disciplines.

“This year, we have enrolled 37 youths at our facility, and the number is increasing every time.”

He said, the aim to empower youths is to give them life skills.

“We want our youths to be self-sustaining through these projects, like we have trained 30 youths in poultry.

“Five youths have started their own projects.

“Young people are coming to play soccer and this is the way of keeping them away from drugs.

“This is also part of rehabilitation for those who have been battling drugs.

“We have been operating for 10 years now, from 2015 to date, assisting young people in different areas to fight child marriages and drugs.

“We are happy that we have spread our wings in different provinces, and the demand for young people who want to get life skills is huge.

“We are trying with the resources we have to manage Harare, Mashonaland East and Manicaland,” added Matuka.

He called for the need to raise more awareness.

“We need to keep talking about issues of drugs, mental health, and create facilities whereby youths can come and gather together to keep them busy.

“We need more resources to put youths into doing projects into doing small business.

“Many youths are going through mental challenges. Our impact has brought a lot of relief to many youths who have graduated with skills.

“Some of the youths have managed to get married, some have dumped drugs, they have got skills.”

Matuka further said, over 300 youths have also been rescued from drugs.

“So far, we have rescued over 300 young people from drugs, but we need support to reach out to many people so that they can be saved from drugs.

“We also saved young people who were on the verge of committing suicide through counselling programmes which we have been carrying out.

“There are more positives, and much appreciation goes to our police for combating the drug menace, although there is a need for more campaigns.

“It’s our plea to stakeholders to come on board to assist, as we believe that if the young people are empowered, we would have done a great job.

“We are moving around high schools where we need to raise awareness as well.”