The Young Leader Exchange in East Africa has organized by streetfootballworld. The idea of the exchange is for a young leader from a fellow streetfootballworld network member in East Africa to spend time at one of the other fellow members in the region, getting to know the work of that organization. The exchange is something where the young leader can share their experience and knowledge from their own organization.
Sport – The Bridge and Moving The Goalpost(from Kenya) applied with joint application and got the chance to share experience from each other through their young leader representative. There for two young women leaders represented Moving the Goalpost(MTG) and stayed in STB from 26th to 30th march 2012. During they stay they learn by get into and discuses on every activities of STB. More of this they present for STB’s staff about their organizations work and created a good experience sharing session. At the end of their visit the two young women reporting as lessons learnt that, “MTG has great lessons to learn from Sport The Bridge on how they are treating beneficiries on issues of Educational Support, MTG and Sport the bridge share a common interest with Sport The bridge on issues of health and they can organise joint learning reflection sessions and MTG can share with sport the bridge the success of working in rural areas and reaching a wider target.”
The second young leader exchange between STB and Moving The Goalpost had done from April 30 – May 5/2012. This was two STB’s young leader representatives went to Kenya kilifi at the place of MTG. The two STB young leader representatives are, Behailu Jemal, who is working in STB as Educator in this position he prepare STB’s beneficiary children for formal school and monitoring them at school. Ashenafi Alemu is former beneficiary and recently STB’s football club member and also doing voluntary work in the organization.
Moving the goalpost(MTG) kilifi is a community based organization that since 2001 use football to empower girls in the rural and urban area of kilifi, Ganze and Kaloleni district, more than three thousand girls (age 9 – 25 years) participate in tournaments and on going leagues. Girls are encouraged to active in leadership roles like, committee membership, coaching, refereeing and first aid. They participate in planning and implementation and monitoring and evaluation of the project. The peer led health education program informs teams and individual players about reproductive health issue, children right, HIV/Aids and assists them through one to one counseling. The economic empowerment program aims to promote economy independency among young women.
The two STB’s representatives on their stay in MTG visited and have the chance to learn from MTG main activities how to empower rural girls through football and relative life skill trainings. They were participate in Peer educators different workshop and also has the chance to introduce STB to the peer educators as well as staffs. As MTG reported on the STB’s representative introduce their work for MTG staffs that “Ashenafi and Behailu got a chance to share with MTG staff member about STB how, they recruit street children and how they reintegrate back to families. MTG staff learnt the different approaches they use and so the relevance of withdraw in youth from difficult situation which was a great lesson Ashenafi was a testimony to the team that sport for development have an impact in the life of young people.”
As lesson learnt the two representatives of STB explain that, “One of the strongest parts of MTG which we learn from them for our organization is how they organize and use volunteers. It has many benefits for the organization as well as for the targeted groups. The volunteers have the chance to get the employment chance in the organization as well. In addition to this Peer educators training is well organized and also big numbers of educator trained at a time. This also what we can adapt for STB work. Thy also appreciate the strong working relationship and resource sharing strategy of MTG with working with other organizations.”
In general even if the two organization working on different disadvantageous groups but both organization goals is to rescue and to empower those vulnerable group. There for they face the same problems and also processes in the same manner. The exchange was a good opportunity to learn from each others and also it can strengthen the two organization working relationship. In addition to this both groups of young people have got high exposure from the exchange programs. They have learnt a lot from each others and how functioning the other organization. More of this it was especial chance to travel abroad for African young people, to see the neighbor country peoples and its environment. They have benefited in personal development also they bring new knowledge for their organization.