By JOWIT SALUSEKI –

AS Zambia readies itself for the August 11 elections this year, the Young Women in Action (YWA), an organisation promoting voter education, this week jam-started phase two of the Triple V Campaign tour with musicians B-Flow and Kan2 headlining the road shows in Kitwe and Ndola.
The message in the second phase is specifically focusing on the key message, ‘Go Out and Vote’ and is hoped to engage the public through road shows and music concerts in various discussions regarding this year’s elections.
The Triple V Campaign anchored on My Vote, My Voice, My Victory slogan is a campaign that initially started by engaging entertainers and top musicians to reach out to the masses and appeal to them to register as voters in its phase one stage.
This project was born out of the combined efforts of the non-governmental organisations and the civil society that were inspired by the need to increase the number of voters in Zambia and stamp out voter apathy.
Thus entertainment starved residents on the Copperbelt with their hunger to digest something from Kan2 and B-Flow have been making cavalcades in the townships of ‘Kopola’ where the two artistes have been charming patrons.
Next week, the musical road show will be in the former Broken Hill town of Kabwe.
Speaking during the on -going music carnival, YWA National Co-ordinator Constance Nobula Bwalya said, “This realisation and formulation of the project was mainly based on the research and statistics of the voter registration and voting pattern in Zambia’s previous elections”.
She said it was noted that in Zambia, statistics released by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) indicate that the country has witnessed a countrywide decline in voter turnout in the last 10 years.
Following the implementation of Phase 1 of the Triple V Campaign, the YWA is wearing a proud smile as over 1.7 million people have been registered as new voters.