YONECO News

Youth to Learn, Share Knowledge and Cutural Beliefs !
By Charles Banda, 2010-07-02

About the picture:
Young people from 4 countries will meet in Malawi to learn from each other, share knowledge and cultural beliefs. The youth from Denmark and Portugal will have a rare opportunity to have a feel and clear understanding of challenges facing their fellow young people in Africa. Through the visit to Malawi young people based in Europe will feel the realities of Africa. A total of 40 young people (10 from Denmark, 10 Portugal, 10 Malawi and 10 from Botswana) will interact and share their knowledge in Malawi. Before the meeting 10 young people from Malawi will visit Botswana from 10th – 18th July 2010. The programme is expected to create active citizenship among the participating youth.

The meeting is the result of partnership among Jammerbugt Ungdomsskole (Denmark), Youth Net and Counselling (Malawi), Botswana National Youth Council (Botswana) and Associação Cidadania Viva (Portugal). The partnership was made in May 2009 for a project on Youth Acting together. The project has a series of activities that include Job Shadowing for youth workers and youth leaders, Training of youth leaders in Botswana and Youth Exchange visit in Malawi. As part of the programme, Asser Mortensen who is International Project Coordinator for Jammerbugt Kommune in Denmark visited YONECO from June 18 – July 3, 2010 for Job Shadowing.

Job shadowing is an event where one person works alongside another in the same job and learning from each other on various aspect of the activities. This involves planning together and working with each other on daily basis. In this case, Asser has been working alongside the staff in YONECO during the period of activities. Asser was Job Shadowing MacBain Mkandawire (Executive Director).

The objectives of the job shadowing were;

(a) To learn from each other on issues of planning, decision making, programme implementation, staff supervision and organizational management;
(b) To share experiences of the programme implementation between the two organisations at various levels
(c) To share organizational cultures and policies that useful for the implementation of the programme
(d) To plan and deliver together two activities for Asser (with MacBain)

Some of the activities that were conducted during the programme include;
• Planning for the training of youth leaders on organizational development and management – June 22
• Training of the youth leaders on organizational development: Week beginning June 28
• Training of the Hope Kit for the YONECO Staff Week beginning June 21
• Checking the venue for the International Youth Camp to be held in August 2010