On-boarding training sessions for 17 new youth initiatives in Goma-DRC and Kagera-Tanzania

From June 22 – 29, 2022, as part of the “Great Lakes Youth Network for Dialogue and Peace. Our Diversity our Opportunity!” project, two onboarding training sessions for newly admitted youth initiatives were held in Goma, DRC and Kagera, Tanzania. A total of 17 youth representing the 17 new initiatives, of which 9 were men and 8 women, were trained by their peers, Training of Trainers (ToTs) graduates, on several modules under the supervision of project expert trainers.

In the framework of the project, the objective in the second year is to support a total of 100 youth organizations throughout the Great Lakes region. Seventeen new initiatives were selected in addition to the 83 ones selected in year one – to reach a total of 100 initiatives.

To build the capacity of the young trainers, the 17 ToTs, of which 9 were men and 8 women, trained in March 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda on adult teaching methods, they were given an opportunity to train their peers who had just joined the project. This was done to the great satisfaction of the expert trainers and the project team who were supervising all these training sessions. It should be mentioned that among the objectives pursued by the project, there is the sharing and transmission of new acquired knowledge from the young beneficiaries to the youth in the community.

Several modules were developed for this purpose by the young trainers, including non-violent communication, critical thinking, debate and public speaking, organizational development, communication and media use, conflict resolution, gender equity and equality, advocacy, entrepreneurship, etc. Resources on some of the modules developed during these trainings are available in the Youth Action Handbook, which can be downloaded from the project website once the handbook is available on the website. This will be available to all youth who are interested in the region.

For practical reasons and to overcome language barriers, the trainings were held in two different locations, Goma in the DR Congo, and Kagera in Tanzania, for French and English speakers respectively. The two training sessions were organized by the five partners of the consortium led by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung DRC, including Pole Institute in DRC, Leo Africa Institute and Cornerstone Development from Uganda and Actions for Democracy and Local Governance from Tanzania.