About Emmanuel:

Emmanuel Dennis Ngongo is a Youth Development Consultant aged 30 years born in Kenya. He is the Country Leader of YES Kenya and the Coordinator of the YES Africa Regional Hub. He is a member of the International Youth Initiative Advisory Board of the Open Society Institute (OSI) that plans strategies for development in empowering youth to become active citizens able to influence public life. He is the Convener and Moderator of the national Youth Convention (NYC) a Kenyan youth movement for social, economic and political change and a life member of the Red Cross Society since 1994.

In recognition of his commitment to youth entrepreneurship and leadership in Kenya, he was selected as the recipient of the 2010 scholarship of the Tällberg Foundation’s David Sjögren Memorial Fund in Sweden that supports the development of young leaders from Africa. He has tremendous passion and dedication to the development of youth in Africa. He believes that young people need a youth-branded platform, from where they can speak powerfully, take appropriate action, inspire and influence positive change with a catalytic impact all over the world. He is currently working to extinguish 1 million kerosene lamps by replacing them with sustainable clean energy life changing products in East Africa.

Emmanuel has been involved with the YES Campaign since 1999 and played a lead role to establish the YES Kenya Country Network in 2002 that has grown to a national organization with over 8400 members. Emmanuel played a key role in organizing the third Global Youth Employment Summit YES Kenya 2006 in Nairobi with more than 1200 delegates from over 100 countries under the theme “Creating Markets…Unleashing Entrepreneurship”. Prior to the Summit he was very instrumental in discussions that lead to the Government of Kenya hosting the Summit and establishing the Ministry of Youth. He has been involved in harnessing the involvement of the larger civil society movement in Kenya to support youth led innovation and entrepreneurship.

He worked for the Kenya Alliance for Advancement of Children (KAACR) a rights advocacy NGO for children as a Field Program Officer. In 2003, he led the African delegation to Petition the Canadian Government to increase its ODA for Least Developed countries in the fight against HIV/AIDS and Poverty. In 2000 he founded the Child Rights Defenders Movement (CRDM), a rights advocacy Youth Group in Kenya. He was involved in a number of Government Processes including The Road Map to Youth Employment, National Youth Policy, Diaspora and External Remittances Policy and the Action Plan to Youth Employment for the Ministry of Labor and Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Youth Affairs respectively.

Emmanuel is widely traveled and has been an inspirational speaker at numerous local and international fora on youth Leading Development. He has been involved on consultancy in many local and international initiatives for young people including, Kenya Country Business Incubator, Straight Talk, Legal Resources Foundation, Youth Agenda, UNHABITAT, UNICEF, UNEP and International Computer Development Network (ICDANET).

He has a wealth of experience in Youth Development work, with strength in Systems Management and global Leadership; affiliate Programs of the Cambridge College in Boston Massachusetts.