October 22, 2007: Meeting with Human Rights Award Winner
This years International Human Rights Award goes to the Rwandan Eugénie Musayidire.
After the award ceremony in the Nuremberg opera, our member Matthias had the opportunity
to meet the laureate and to introduce her the YTTC and the supporters association in
a short personal talk.
Eugénie Musayidire was awarded for installing a reconciliation center for youths and
young adults in her hometown Nyanza. This center help people who suffer from the
mental aftermaths of the 1994 genocide. Eugénie had lost her mother, her brother and his
family, and further relatives through the genocide. Herself allready flew to Burundi in
1973 and on to Germany, where she found political asylum. Here, she was informed about
the genocide and had the opportunity to overcome this trauma with prfessional assistence.
She took heart to go back to her home country to offer therapeutic aid for the concerned
and courses and workshops about human rights and the causes and consequences of the
genocide with her association "Hope for Rwanda".
YADDI president Cléophas will deepen the contact to Eugénie with a visit in the
reconciliation cente in nearby Nyanza. Maybe there will be the chance for a cooperation
between both projects.
October 21, 2007: Cléophas' summary of the Global Forum in Geneva
From 24-26 September, the President of YADDI attended the Global Forum on youth and ICT for
development: youth and ICT as agents of change. Young people attending a United Nations-backed
summit in Geneva have asked to be involved in initiatives that utilize information and
communications technology (ICT) to tackle global challenges. Many youth organizations
participated in the forum to tell the leaders that they want to remain engaged in creating
youth centres of excellence and global youth networks that place ICT in the service of
development. The forum helped harness the creativity and dynamism that the youth has in
exploring and exploiting ICT for their own benefit and for the benefit of their peers and
communities in advancement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The
Forum also aimed at actively engaging youth in debates and discussions with their peer
representatives, policy makers, private sector, technology and thought leaders and others in
exploring ways to empower the community and to participate more fully in society through the
appropriate and responsible use of ICT. The remarkable concern was that it's very difficult
for youth-led organization to secure funds to run their ICT related projects and
other youth social welfare initiatives. Youth request policy makers to ease the ways of
accessing to start up funds so that youth can really play their role in achieving millennium
development goals.
October 20, 2007: The YTTC supports the Moulin Wiki Project
The Moulin Wiki Project wants to bring Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia,
into remote areas where otherwise no access to complete enclyclopedic knowledge
is available. For this purpose, an offline version of the french Wikipedia was
developed, which is an executable programme, fits on one single CD and has
moderate hardware requirements. The CDs are being distributed free of charge
and are used in places where a computer, but no internet access is available.
The project has its origin in Bamako, Mali, but is operating in several other
countries, meanwhile. We have met one member of the Mouling Wiki Team on
the Global Froum in Geneva and decided, as the project fits well into the
philosophy of the YTTC, the act as a multiplicator and to offer the Wiki CDs
to be fetched from our office in Butare.
link:
www.moulinwiki.org/
September 25, 2007: Cooperation with AWO Kreisjugendwerk
The Nta Kibazo Supporters Association isn't alone anymore: members
of the association were invited the join and present our project on
the last general meeting of the "Kreisjugendwerk Taktlos", the youth
organisation beneath the labour welfare association in Koblenz.
Taktlos promised to support our association with advice and
assistence - for example during an event that will be announced
here, soon. The AWO Taktlos, with its voluntary members, organizes
a broad range of youth work in the Koblenz area - it for example bears
the brunt of planning and realizing the annual youth periphery
recreation programme, from whose carer team the core of todays
members was recruited. But Taktlos also takes a stand on topics
besides youth work, for instance during the campaigns among
the G8 summit in Heiligendamm this year. We are happy to call
such an active, in a positive sense inconvenient, yet reputable
youth network our friends.
link:
www.awo-taktlos.de
