I was happy to spend time with Canada World Youth-UVIKIUTA Program’s participants in Mwika, Tanzania on New Year’s Eve and New Year.
Canada World Youth (CWY) is a national non-governmental organization that designs and delivers international educational programs for young adults. It was founded in 1971 by the late Senator Jacques HĂ©bert (1923-2007), a former Senator who was profoundly dedicated to youth and to greater intercultural understanding. The CWY Program is an exchange program that takes place between Canada and other developing countries around the globe, (Canada and Tanzania in this case). UVIKIUTA is an independent non-governmental organization in Tanzania that works with youth. It was created in 1983 following a proposal in which the Government of Tanzania invited unemployed youth to group together in order to receive assistance. Uvikiuta’s projects focus on income generation, employment, and nutrition.
I was visiting my friend, Kyle, who we met in a youth leadership conference while I was doing a similar program in Canada, and our friendship grew over time. The group, which spent three months in Peterborough in Canada, is now on their second phase of the program in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. I got to spend time with them and it was interesting to note that they had similar joys and challenges like our group had two years ago, and that they worked together as a team, just like our group. They performed a dance and it was the highlight of the day and the most hilarious dance that I’ve ever seen.
During their group living time in Mwika, they lived in the same house (separate houses for male and female) for three weeks and performed in-house and group duties together, interacted with local community and volunteered in the community. They planted more than 500 trees in the village, repainted the local health center and did a community impact assessment on the impact volunteers and volunteerism has on the community.
They will be spending the next two months in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania after they spent three weeks of group living in a small village located two hours away from Moshi. Â They will be living with local host families and working in the community, in different work placements that focus on education, agriculture, information technology, environmental issues and working in orphanage among others.
We later went for a hike and visited a waterfall which was an hour away (or so we thought) but it kept getting further; more on the hike later…
For more information about the Canada World Youth’s programs and partners around the world, please visit their website.
Repainting the windows and floors at the local health center
Interacting with the village kids
Data entry on community impact assessment and sketching the local dala dalas (local transport).
Group meals-Lunch and finding out about host families in Dar Es Salaam
The program supervisors-Alana McGoldrick and Robert Balidyan
CWY hiking post soon 🙂
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