Month: September 2019

Dear Youth Peacemakers Tanzania,

YGlobal from Norway congratulate you on your anniversary. YPM is doing great work! YPM is building peace and justice in the community and in the world.

In the world today we have extreme poverty and climate change as two huge challenges. Worldwide around 20.000 children die every day as a consequence of poverty. The root cause of poverty is injustice. Rich countries are consuming too much of the world’s resources. Rich people all over the world are doing too little to create justice and peace in our world and in our communities. YPM is working to change this.

We are proud to partner with you. Youth Peacemakers create saving and investment VICOBA groups lifting people out of poverty and engaging in activities that create accountability and improved services. Youth peacemakers create sports activities for young people where we all can learn about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and get ideas on how to promote justice and peace in a democratic and non-violent manner. Young people from Peacemakers engage in policy dialogues with policymakers at all levels. YPM sent a competent young woman to Paris some time ago to discuss climate policies at the COP Climate Summit. YPM make sure that young people’s voices are heard and listened to by important policymakers.

We are inspired by Jesus when he says: Blessed are the Peacemakers, they shall be called children of God. We are all children of God and we are all called to be Peacemakers and active promoters of global justice.

In Norway and elsewhere young people are protesting when climate change can destroy the sustainability of nature created by God. We are called to care for our planet and for the people living in this world. We can never accept poverty, violation of human rights or degradation of our environment.

The Bible says: Let there be no hate in your heart for your brother; but you may make a protest to your neighbour, so that he may be stopped from doing evil.

The world has too much evil. We will protest and stop people from doing evil. We are part of global social movements trying to stop poverty, stop discrimination of women, stop climate change, stop pollution, and work hard for justice and peace.

We apologize for the injustice created by high-income countries. We apologize for the climate change created by high-carbon-emitting countries. Norway is among those. Let us unite to create a social movement that can stop climate change, stop poverty and make peace in our world.

We ask you please to continue the close partnership with YGlobal, the YWCA-YMCA of Norway. Thanks for receiving high numbers of volunteers and guests from Norway to Lushoto and Tanzania. Thanks for your spirit of partnership and brotherhood. Please continue to train volunteers for a global movement that can realise and implement the Global SDGs. We need a world free from poverty. Please continue working for this goal together with young people from all over the world. Nobody is free until everybody is free.

Be blessed you Young Peacemakers of Tanzania!

Warm regards

Fredrik Glad-Gjernes | Director YGLOBAL

On 12^th August in 2014, YPM was registered legally under the Companies Act, 2002 (Cap.212) of the laws of Tanzania with a registration certificate number 110507 and she was officially registered under the NGO Act on 04/08/2019 with registration number OONGO/Rs/000237. Tracing back, YPM was established in 2013 as a single project supported by Y Global International, which incorporated youths under SEKOMU and surrounding communities; in a short while, YPM expanded her activities to wider geographical area specifically in Tanga region by establishing Youths camps comprised of 200 youths participating in youth skills empowerment and sports functions.

During the two days of celebration the total number of 2,500 attended the event, YPM set the first day as the day of acquiring knowledge through pieces of trainings, there was training from an expert from Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI). The expert trained VICOBA members about agricultural entrepreneurship specifically on identifying the type of soil and which crops should be planted. The next presentation was from Doctor Msuya who presented issues about HIV/AIDs and Hepatitis B. And the last presentation was from an expert from National Microfinance Bank (NMB), the presentation was about financial management and financial services. All these pieces of trainings fulfilled the motive of YPM to equip her people with knowledge in celebrating the 5 years of YPM. And for sure this marked the importance of gathering together to celebrate.

The second day which was the climax of the event was attended by guest of honour hon. January Lugangika the Lushoto district commissioner ,YPM board chairperson Rev John Sembuyagi, YPM director Rev. Godfrey Walalaze, YPM programs manager Peter Jali and other YPM staffs, the tensing group, representative from football, bicycle, youth parliament and peace clubs.

There were also the Lushoto OCD, representative of the Director- General of Small Industries Development Organization (SIDO), (Regional Manager of SIDO) the District Executive Director(DED) of Lushoto M/S Ikupa Mwaisyoge , Bumbuli council executive director, Handeni council executive director, M/S Joyce Israel the Lushoto district gender, women, children and development officer besides other people who were invited. The commemoration in this day commenced with a march of youth, women, children and men who were appearing in white, black as well as light blue YPM T-shirts, led by trumpets from YPM head office to the Roman Catholic hall through the main city town, bus stand and main streets of Lushoto town. The event was opened by word of prayer by YPM board chairperson, and all guest got a chance to greet and address the mass. It was superb and colourful.

In celebrating 5^th years of YPM, the organization has made a good step in fighting against poverty and injustice. During this celebration, we join our hands with the 5^th government of the United Republic of Tanzania to champion the national policy of industrialization. To succeed in this, we need to involve effectively youth in every stage of planning and developing favourable policies for youth and employment. By recognizing the importance of youth to participate today, YPM has invested to empower youths and give them an opportunity and know who they are and to use the opportunity and talents that they have in building our country’s economy and their own economy. Surely, we have succeeded in many ways in the past 5 years, to mention a few YPM has succeeded to;

• Have 183 VICOBA groups with a capital of 1.23 billion shillings and the total loan of 850 million were provided to the members.
• 17 PETS groups.
• Have Lushoto Youth Parliament (LYP) which consists of youths from all secondary schools in Lushoto.
• Conducts inter-school debate competitions and having learning centres for youths.
• Educating young people in schools about peace, rights, duties and their responsibilities toward their rights through UNSC 2250.
• Have sports camps and giving youths the chance to participate in international and national competitions. In this, we have (athletics, bicycle competition, football team which brought a big challenge to both football teams in Tanga region and out of Tanga. We also invited our friends from abroad to train our youths in different areas of sports.
• Conducts different trainings to YPM members based on sector and age.
• Have the movement to educate the community like “Niache nisome elimu ni mkombozi wangu” (let me school, education is my saviour) movement and positive influencing parent to contribute money or food for their children in schools so that they can have lunch.
• Have a tree nursery which will produce 300,000 trees end of this year; in the past two months we have started the project and we have already planted more than 30,000 trees at the YPM head office.

We hope that we will implement in a wider range of economic empowerment, environment, education, sports and good governance at the family level, community, national and international arena.

In celebrating our 5^th birthday, we know that peace can be hindered by many things, the one main challenge being extreme poverty, corruption, lack of accountability in the government system, climate and environmental destruction and any kind of humiliation.

As we mark the five years milestone, we do affirm and commit ourselves in the next five years into more of.

1. Implementation our activities towards fulfilling SDG goals 1,4,10 and 13.
2. Working hand in hand with our government towards vision 2025 of making Tanzania middle income economy.
3. Implements our strategic plan in making extreme poverty a history, and much more empowerment, lobbying and advocacy.
4. Networking with like-minded organizations at the local, national and international platforms.
5. Train and equip many youths a sports school mentally, spirit and physically through a sports school that will be built and run through YPM philosophy.

Lastly, we appreciate every single step, support in kind, spiritually, in cash and technical assistance that have been accorded to YPM. It is through the soft touching  hands that many have been able to be reached , touched  and molded into new beings  with  new hopes in their lives, that of their families, nation and the global citizens.

We do invite more support in any way to make sure that YPM not only fulfill her goals, but go beyond her set goals to make dreams of many become a reality in their lives.

As said in Mathew 5:9. (Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called children of God”. We would like to urge you to work for peace,

Live for peace and campaign for peaceful coexistence wherever you are for we believe that “when human conflict and miss-understanding are cleared by the sweetness of love then the world could be a better Place, a heaven on earth” (Mahatma Gandhi).