Machel Waikenda’s Journey: From Cleaning Bathrooms For School Fees To Becoming Youth Minister

Machel Waikenda’s Journey: From Cleaning Bathrooms For School Fees To Becoming Youth Minister

Many are the times when you will come across stories of people who have made sacrifices to have a great future.  They don’t wait on anybody to change their course in life, they do it themselves.

Meet Machel Waikenda, I am sure you have heard of him especially through the famous #AskWaikenda forum on Twitter. He is a youth county minister and an electrical engineering graduate from the University of Florida who did odds jobs to pay for his university fee.

In a recent interview with The Nairobian he talks of how he once had two or more jobs to pay his fees. “I remember working through two to four jobs at a time so that I could pay for my tuition.”

Waikenda was born in Nairobi, on 23 April 1981 and he has a bachelor’s degree  in electrical engineering from the University of Florida. “I graduated with a Commercial Pilots License at about the same time that I was getting my engineering degree.”

He says, “My father only paid  for one semester and after that, he told me I was on my own.” While a lot of people would be stressed out by such actions from their parents, Waikenda says, “That was the best thing that he did for me as it taught me how to hustle.”

And what was his first job? He was cleaning bathrooms for a grocery store adding that this is where he rose up the ranks to become an assistant manager. “I also worked as a telemarketing officer, hospital  administrator and a math and physics tutor,” he says.

He is also a man of many achievements, in the process of studying for his engineering course he also did some other things on the side.

“I decide to take electrical engineering although in the process I developed interest in flying which saw me take lesson in a local flying school,” Waikenda tells The Nairobian.

“I footed the tuition fees for both my degree and flying classes’ .Later I started a curio business where I would get the products from Maasai market and sell them abroad,” adds Waikenda.

Waikenda has been the founder of the Jubilee Coalition Dunda campaign. Through media, he advocated, the proposed government’s framework to allocate 2.5 per cent of the GDP annually to establish a Youth Enterprise Capital Fund for youth access interest-free and government’s announcement for allocation of 30% of its procurement tenders to young entrepreneurs. He is also the board member of the World Youth Parliament.

“I always knew I would get into leadership and worked tirelessly towards that end by trying as much as I could to leave positive mark into young people’s lives,” Waikenda tells The Nairobian.

He admits he had a culture shock as every student who goes to school abroad but he also had some good times. “My most memorable lecture was the one who taught me Calculus, who made me understand complex equations and embrace engineering and history,” says Waikenda.

He is currently a county Executive in Charge of Youth Affairs and Sports in Kiambu County talks of his greatest achievement.

His parting shot? “Being able to work through university, pay my bills and fees while working through two to three jobs was a major achievement.”

Currently, he is completing his doctorate in business administration at the University of Phoenix.

He is such a young man that our today’s youth could look up to, don’t you think?

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