The Boy Nobody Is Asking About

Picture a boy of fifteen in a village near Ugunja. He is not in trouble yet. He is not in a report, a project proposal or a baseline survey. He goes to school when the fees allow, and helps at home when they do not. Nobody has asked him how he is. Nobody has asked what he wants to become.

This essay is about that boy, and about what community programming has quietly decided about him.

A good intention that left a gap

For decades, development work has put girls at the centre, and for good reason. Girls faced real barriers: early marriage, dropping out of school, violence. Programmes, funding and policy followed, and they delivered real gains. I am not arguing against any of it.

My argument is about what happened next. When one group is named as the vulnerable one, another can become invisible. Boys were assumed to be fine: strong, resilient, able to look after themselves. That assumption became a policy without anyone ever writing it down.

What the assumption costs

Boys learn early not to cry, not to ask for help, not to admit they are lost. A boy who is struggling learns to hide it, and hidden problems do not wait. They surface later as dropping out, drinking, betting, risky work, or violence at home and on the street. By then the community sees a problem young man, not a boy who was failed years earlier.

I want to be careful here. I am not saying boys suffer more than girls. I am saying that suffering nobody notices is its own kind of problem, and programmes built around what they already measure are poorly placed to find it.

What a better approach looks like

It begins with three things.

First, count boys. Where programmes track girls’ enrolment, completion and wellbeing, they should track boys’ too, because what is not measured is rarely funded.

Second, mentors. Boys need men who show up consistently, talk straight, and prove that asking for help is a strength.

Third, a way to earn. Skills, small capital, a first job. A young man with income and purpose is far harder for despair to recruit.

Why I am writing this

I studied community health and development, and I live and work in Ugunja. I see how much good community programming does, and I see where its attention stops. I would like to help move it a little further.

Nobody is asking for boys to be put ahead of girls. We are asking for one question to be added to every community meeting, every proposal and every budget line: what about the boys?