The Tanzania Youth Coalition (TYC), implementation partner of the African-German Youth Initiative (AGYI) in the pilot country Tanzania, organised a partner matching conference entitled "Strengthening existing civil society partnerships and creating new opportunities" from the 2nd to the 5th of August 2018. The event took place in Dar es Salaam in cooperation with the Federal Association for Cultural Education for Children and Young People (Bundesvereinigung Kulturelle Kinder- und Jugendbildung, BKJ) and the German Sports Youth (Deutsche Sportjugend, dsj). The invited guests - who had travelled from various places in Tanzania as well as from Uganda, Rwanda and Germany - mainly came from the fields of art, culture and sport.
After an initial presentation of the organisations, teams were formed to highlight different perspectives on the 17 goals for sustainable development (SDGs). The participants reflected on what "good partnership perspectives" mean to them and which intercultural challenges can arise. The main focus was still getting to know each other and networking.
On the second day the national sports federation of Tanzania, the BKJ, dsj and TYC introduced themselves in their functions as umbrella organisations. Afterwards, the participants discussed how an African-German exchange project based on partnership can be organised and how its impact can be reviewed. Here, too, one of the main focuses of their dialogue was on how the SDGs and the methods of global learning can be included in all steps of the exchange project.
Following the start of the conference, the next day began with a training session on intercultural communication and diversity awareness. For the remaining two days of the conference, the focus was on field work: The participants got to know the youth work of the Azam Football and Youth Club and the National Arts Council of Tanzania and gained an insight into the projects of the Babawatoto Center in Dar es Salaam. The children and youth centre dedicated to children's rights and has a special focus on street children. Over the years, the centre has become as a key institution for young people in the neighbouring districts. The cultural work with the young people is mainly directed towards strengthening their personality.
At the last day of the conference the participants visited two other cultural youth education organisations in Bagamoyo. They experienced their work on site in the context of a music and dance performance. This gave the participants further inspiration and points of contact for their own youth work and for future exchanges. By the end of the days together, some of the organisations had already shared concrete ideas for future exchange projects. In November 2018, the partner tandems created during the conference are to meet again at the network meeting "jugend.kultur.austausch global" (youth, culture, exchange globally) of the BKJ in Potsdam, Germany. There they have the opportunity to get to know "the other side" before the first youth encounters between Tanzania and Germany in the field of cultural education start in 2019. "And in 20 to 30 years," said a Tanzanian conference participant, "we will see what the cornerstone has been laid for here today". The AGYI and its partners will continue to contribute to the shaping of new civil society partnerships in the future.
