TITLE:
Out-of-School Mentorship and Positive Youth Development among Secondary Students in Kibra, Nairobi, Kenya
AUTHORS:
Catherine Wanjiru Naliaka Wafula, Teresia Wamuyu, Peter Koome
KEYWORDS:
Youth, Mentorship, Out-of-School Programmes, Secondary School Students, Kibra, Kenya
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.12 No.11,
November
12,
2025
ABSTRACT: Even though youth make up a large portion of Kenya’s population, many lack opportunities for full development, which limits their social, economic, and personal growth. This study explored how out-of-school youth mentorship is associated with positive youth development (PYD) among secondary school students in Kibra, Nairobi County. The focus was on mentor support and individual traits. We used a cross-sectional convergent parallel design targeting 3560 youths enrolled in ten community-based mentorship programmes. A total of 349 programme participants and 102 non-participants took part. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression. Qualitative data from 10 key informants and seven focus groups were thematically analyzed. The findings showed that high mentorship participation is linked to higher PYD: 97% of highly involved students reported high PYD versus 33% among low-involvement students. Programme involvement was a stronger predictor (β = 0.287) than community engagement (β = 0.243). Mentorship also boosted traits like school connectedness (97.4%), goal orientation (95.1%), motivation (94%), collaboration (91.4%), and faith (98.3%), with school connectedness, goal orientation, and collaboration being the strongest predictors (β = 0.32, 0.21, 0.184; R2 = 0.555, p