The African-German Youth Initiative (AGYI) is building on existing Engagement Global youth initiatives and working closely with expert organisations, supporters and associations of German and African civil society in order to strengthen the quality and scale of the African-German youth exchange.
The Sounding Group was created withing the coordinating unit of the AGYI in order to ensure that the perspectives of German civil society actors are incorporated in implementation of AGYI activities. Another objective of the Sounding Group is to provide continued strategic support and consultancy towards the further development of the AGYI.
Sounding Group members include the strategic partners of the German Federation for youth Education and Cultural Learning (BKJ) and the German Sports Youth (DSJ). The civil society partners of the Engagement Global exchange programs, represented by the weltwärts interest groups,the ASA alumni network, the programs ENSA and weltwärts extracurricular exchange projects in the context of Agenda 2030 are also represented. In addition, the development Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) Germanwatch e.V., bridge_it! e.V., as well as the national NEMIB network of migrants from Brandenburg complete the group.
The aim of the Sounding Group as a working body is to enable confidential and equal expert dialogue for all members in order to support the implementation of the AGYI goals and to promote these with recommendations and expertise. This also includes regularly providing the resonance group with information about the developments within in the African partner structure in the AGYI implementing countries Benin, South Africa and Tanzania.
The outcomes of the Sounding Group discussions are incorporated into the continued development of topics and tasks by the coordinating body of the AGYI. They are also tabled for consideration during the meetings of the AGYI Steering Committee and during the partner meeting involving the political leaders of the AGYI.
The first of the biannual meetings took place on the 7th of November 2018 in Bonn and dealt with the future working methods of the Sounding Group as well as with the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Framework. Topical focus areas, like Inclusion were brought to the coordinating unit of the AGYI were also presented. The aim is to expand the content focus of the AGYI to also include these key and crucial areas which in turn will improve the quality of the AGYI exchanges in the middle and long terms.
The inclusion of the diaspora and the results of the steering committee and partner meet-ings which took place in November 2018 in Benin will be discussed in the next Sounding Group meeting scheduled for March 2019. The coordinating unit of the AGYI is extremely grateful to the members of the Sounding Group for the fantastic collaboration so far and is looking forward to the continued mutual cooperation for the entire duration of the AGYI pilot phase until 2020.
