As outlined in our Manifesto, the ZPPD is highly committed to ensuring that Zimbabwe’s young people become adults who can realize their full potential. This must not be construed as a favour, but as a duty of the government.  We will develop a comprehensive national Child and Youth Policy that secures and safeguards the future and heritage of Zimbabwe’s young people.  We view in all seriousness the youth as Zimbabwe’s leaders of the future.

The ZPDP will seek to cultivate in our youth, a high level of respectability and responsibility.  We will provide for them a central and partnering role at the heart of Zimbabwe’s government and at the forefront of national development.  The ZPDP will hold as paramount to our policy formulation, the welfare and development of our youth.  We will seek to turn our youth into active participants and partners rather than passive recipients of narrow and defeatist youth policies such as those of ZANU PF. 

Education and Training
The education and training systems in our country have become completely run down under the retrogressive policies of ZANU PF.  Most universities, colleges and vocational training institutions are either reeling below capacity or are simply struggling to cope with their capacity intakes due to severely depleted funding.  College and University life has become completely unbearable for students and lecturers alike, and the effect of this is the distraction of students from their core activities of studying as they instead partake in demonstrations and protests to force the authorities to change their policies.

The ZPDP is fully aware of these problems and will seek to address the issues of education and training as a means of ensuring that the youth, as they are being educated and trained, will be guaranteed a role at the centre of the development of their country.  Education and training will be used as tools for the empowerment of the youth and depriving them of these options would simply amount to disenfranchising them. That is unacceptable.

The ZPDP will re-introduce non-means tested university and college grants that are in line with inflation.  Our government will also de-politicise university and college funding of students so as to ensure that there is equal access to such resources for all of Zimbabwe’s youth, without discrimination. The system of scholarships and bursaries is now heavily politicised with ZANU PF cronies’ children being automatic beneficiaries. The ZPDP will fully address the skewed system of favouritism that is now a norm in this area of funding because deserving children are being sacrificed for less gifted children who are simply politically connected to the ruling party.

Youth Programmes
Zimbabwe’s youth need sustainable and productive programmes that will keep them occupied and continuously developing their skills.  For years, ZANU PF has politically meddled with, and thwarted the efforts of our youth who seek to develop their theatrical, musical and poetic skills. The ruling party has gone as far as barring or banning plays and songs from public access because these are felt to be politically critical of the government. This is work that young Zimbabweans spend a lot of their time developing only to be thrown out of the window by politicians. Again this is unacceptable.

The ZPDP has a vision for youth that is loaded with programmes to be rolled out throughout the country with particular emphasis on outlying areas where Zimbabwe’s youth have limited access to amenities.  We will also make funding available for the establishment of new Centres for the Arts so as to cater for the ever growing numbers of youth who leave high school.

Our programmes will include theatrical performance, musical workshops, film and television productions, visual arts and poetry, which will serve as a source of artistic expression for our youth and will showcase their talent, while providing them access to some of the best paying disciplines and career opportunities in the world.  Our youth deserve a shot at attaining the highest level of artistic possibility.

The Arts programme will be offered in conjunction with a National Vocational Training emphasis that will result in more colleges with greater intakes for vocational students.  Vocational students will be able to graduate and continue their education in Arts programmes and develop their careers further.  

Financial support for the Arts and for vocational career advancement will form an integral part of the ZPDP government’s policy and our youth vision because without the requisite funding the youth development initiative will not be realised. Youth development will therefore be a feature of the ZPDP financial budget.

Sports Development
Sports careers are currently some of the most lucrative professions in the entire world.  Most of Zimbabwe’s youth are tremendously athletic and some have the potential to become world-renowned athletes.  Yet, under the current government, there are no serious youth sports and training programs available.

There is a chronic shortage of sporting academies where our youth can practice and develop their skills as athletes and become gainfully employed sports professionals.  The ZPDP will seek to overhaul ZANU PF’s sports policies and develop 21st Century sports initiatives that will produce world class sporting professionals from among Zimbabwe’s youth.

There are various funding initiatives available from world sports governing bodies that are specifically earmarked for countries that develop youth sports at grassroots levels.  Our party will seek to take full advantage of these.  This will not only develop and better the lives of our youth, but this will definitely take their minds away from criminal activities are that are usually a direct result of idleness.

ZPDP Department for Youth Development