WORLD NEWS | Jill Biden talks safe sex and condoms to young Kenyans

NAIROBI, Feb. 25 (AP) — It was Saturday when U.S. first lady Jill Biden was studying in Kenya.

She praises young people for learning about safe sex and dating habits, attends conferences for women creating their own banking systems, and talks to local entrepreneurs who are being helped by programs that connect tractor owners and farmers.

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All three programs aim to help women and young people take charge of their lives so they can support themselves and their families. During a five-day two-state visit to Africa this week, Biden has been emphasizing U.S.-backed efforts to empower those groups.

“These are really issues that everybody needs to talk about, but somehow they don’t, and the consequences of not talking about it are so dire,” Biden told dozens of young people about safe sex, condoms, condoms. They spoke of birth control use and birth control at the Shujaaz Konnect Festival, a local youth empowerment event. “So I love seeing young people here.”

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In tents where the young people had similar online conversations, they showed her the questionnaires they used to spark discussion. First question: “What would you say if I told you that I now have a condom in my pocket?”

Biden smiled. “Is this the first time they’ve met?” she asked.

A representative for Shujaaz said that this kind of blunt proposal helps teens and young adults overcome shyness, and said it is sometimes easier to ask such questions to strangers.

“I’m surprised you didn’t start like this, what’s your greatest achievement? Instead, I had a condom in my pocket,” the first lady said.

The festival is a partnership with the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, which works with USAID and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to help teach young Kenyans how to avoid HIV infection, which causes AIDS.

Biden, on the fourth day of a five-day tour of Namibia and Kenya, spent a week promoting the program, which also helps women and young people learn skills that will help them find or start businesses.

Her visit is part of President Joe Biden’s pledge to deepen U.S. engagement with African countries, many of which feel neglected by the United States. Part of that effort also involves countering Chinese influence on the continent, which Beijing has done by boosting trade and spending on roads and other public works projects.

Biden was due to wrap up her visit on Sunday by heading to an area near the Kenya-Tanzania border to raise awareness of the severe drought that is threatening lives and livelihoods.

Earlier Saturday, the first lady traveled to the government community center in the informal Nairobi settlement of Kibera for a meeting of female small business owners participating in the Happy Women program. Founded in 2009 by Kenyan First Lady Rachel Ruto, the program promotes women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion.

Participants create “desktop banking” groups, pooling their resources so they can lend each other money they can’t get from traditional banks. Some women use loans to start businesses. One woman said she opened a day care center.

“Women find ways to support other women, lift them up and boost their families’ economic prosperity, which is pretty neat, right?” said Biden, who visited a different empowerment project when he visited Kibera in 2010.

“I’ve always taught my own daughters and granddaughters the importance of financial independence, so now, here, you’ve found a way to build your own banking system, which is incredible,” Biden said. Her granddaughter, 29, Naomi sat nearby.

Before taking his seat, Biden is wrapped from the waist down in an apron-like fabric known as a leso or kanga, which women wear at home.

At another event, Biden spoke to local entrepreneurs, small farmers and others who have been helped by Hello Tractor, which connects tractor owners with farmers in need of machinery.

The First Lady also laid a wreath at the Park of Remembrance on Aug. 7 in honor of those killed in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed, including 12 Americans. More than 4,500 people were injured. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)