The campaign, dubbed “First Time Voter Registration Campaign”, was launched last month in Gokwe, Midlands province, on May 4 and is expected to spread to other areas around the country.
So far, the campaign has managed to reach out to 300 first time voters in Gokwe and Kadoma.
The YAD is a Non-Governmental Organisation that aims to promote meaningful youth participation in electoral processes and political leadership.
In an interview with The Zimbabwean, YAD Director, Tichaona Masiyambiri, said the campaign was part of efforts to ensure the extensive participation of youths in the country’s electoral processes.
He said the YAD campaign was targeting young people from remote areas of the country where there was a lack of information concerning the country’s electoral processes. “The objective of the campaign is to encourage first time voters to register. We believe young people have a critical role to play in the country’s electoral processes because they constitute a huge chunk of the electorate.
“Under this campaign, we are targeting young people, especially those who have not participated in electoral processes before.
We are targeting about 5 000 first time voters and we hope we will be able to achieve that target before elections,” said Masiyambiri. Masiyambiri said YAD had created a short message service platform under which they were sending messages to various youths around the country encouraging them to spread the gospel of registering to vote in the next elections.
He said the YAD had taken advantage of the registration campaigns to encourage youths across the country to desist from violence and guard against political manipulation.
“We have also taken the opportunity to make sure that they (youths) participate peacefully in the electoral process.
The message that we are telling the youths is that we do not need to fight but let us go to register to vote in our numbers then we express ourselves through voting rather than through violent means,” said Masiyambiri.
Post published in: News