Youth Safety Awareness Initiative popularly known as its brand name, Crime Si Poa® was founded in 2007 by its current Executive Director Peter Ouko while serving time in the Death Row Section of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for a wrongful conviction.

OUR STORY

In 2007, a light bulb moment inspired peter to form the youth safety awareness initiative, popularly known by its brand name, crime si poa®

Youth Safety Awareness Initiative popularly known as its brand name, Crime Si Poa® was founded in 2007 by its current Executive Director Peter Ouko while serving time in the Death Row Section of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for a wrongful conviction.

The birth of the organization was in response to the alarming rate of youth incarceration in Kenya with 75% of inmates being below 30 years of age. In addition, the lack of an organization that directly dealt with crime and delinquency was also a motivating factor. Leveraging on the strong partnership with the Kenya Prisons Service, the organization got involved in advocacy work both within and outside prisons.

In its formative years, CSP  lobbied the Prison Service to set up resource centres within various prisons where inmates received training in entrepreneurship, business and life skills. We further advocated for inmates to be allowed to open individual bank accounts to save income earned from these prison-based social enterprises to support their families and re-settle upon release. This greatly helped to reduce recidivism by ex-offenders and is what birthed the current Social Enterprise program.

In 2010, the organization was formally registered as a non-governmental organization with stated action points to achieve its mandate. Subsequently, Peter put together a dedicated Board of Directors primed and focused on delivering the organisation’s strategic direction.

Upon his release in 2016, Peter’s first task on record was to lobby the President through Crime Si Poa® to help the youth of Korogocho slums regain their grabbed playground. The playground was not only reclaimed but modernized into a stadium that the community uses to keep the youth engaged leading to a decrease in crime figures in that neighbourhood. 

In 2018 Crime Si Poa® partnered with Strathmore University Law Clinic and trained a cohort of 25 community youth paralegals. The organization continues to hold and coordinate legal awareness sessions on weekends in the marginalized communities as a precursor to setting up community legal aid centres. 

Over the last 3 years, the organization has been able to empower young people by incubating, training and assisting them in developing a network of community-based groups to directly impact lives in their local neighbourhoods. The Youth Safety Awareness Initiative now works in 15 schools, 12 communities and two juvenile prisons spread across four counties in Kenya.