In this year’s National Youth Week, UNA Tanzania partnered with Prime Minister’s Office – Ministry of Youth to plan, organize and the event with the theme, “ICT for Sustainable Development.” To ensure that young men and women are at a better position to utilize ICT opportunities for their own economic advantage in Tanzania. Additionally, the activities aimed to raise awareness among youth on their potential to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Five Years Development Plan (FYDP III 2021/22-2025/26)

The Week kicked off on Friday 8th October in Chato Geita with 2000 young people from different regions in Tanzania were in attendance with the Hon MP Prime Ministers Kassim Majaliwa Kassim inaugurating the Youth Week with a series of a youth symposium, exhibitions and sports bonanza.

The symposium highlighted important issues regarding the strengthening of safe spaces for youth in Tanzania and government’s efforts to provide a safe environment for youth; the importance of life-skills training to enable youth to overcome life challenges; the importance of ICT for youth economic development; and the fight against corruption and drug abuse.

We, the United Nations Association of Tanzania supported a Sports Bonanza aiming to promote the role of sports in co-existence efforts and bring together youth to learn from each other. With 400 youth participating in the bonanza, The Guest of Honor, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, Hon. Jenista Mhagama insisting on sports promotion as a recreational space where a healthy lifestyle can be nurtured, where youth can meet to improve their social skills, strengthen cultural values and adapt to rules.

United Nations Association of Tanzania in collaboration with Msichana Initiative engaged through hosting the “Future of CSO” session through a breakout session during the CSO Week, October 2021. The session aimed to highlight the role of youth-led organizations, barriers in harnessing the space as well as discussing joint solutions on improving the participation of youth-led organizations so as to groom the next generation of young leaders in the sector. 

The discussion focused on the role of youth-led organizations in the sector, achievements, as well as suggesting solutions that will help to improve the performance and visibility of the organizations inviting youth-led organizations, young women-led organizations, philanthropies, and other development partners while other participants joining virtually being able to share their insights and engage in the discussion and learning from pioneers in the sector.

Youth-led and young women-led organizations have the potential to generate novel, bottom-up solutions that respond to local situations, interests, and values, solving social and economic problems of marginalized communities. However, most of the voices of local youth-led organizations are left unheard due to issues related to trust, financial constraints, and barriers in harnessing the space to unleash their power. Youth-led organizations usually have less capacity to attract big funding and comply with donor requirements than well-established CSOs, despite being a good entry point in interventions regarding young people due to their direct engagement with young people in the community. Through this discussion, we envision learning from each other, and from other stakeholder’s perspectives towards funding initiatives by youth-led organizations. 

The Tanzania Sustainable Development Platform (TSDP) to which UNA Tanzania are co-conveners focuses on enhancing a multi-stakeholder contributions and dialogue on shaping CSOs role in effective participation in the implementation and monitoring of the SDGs in Tanzania. Last year, with the recognition of the TSDP in the National Coordination Framework for the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation of the SDGs in Tanzania by the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the platform was relied on to conduct consultations for FYDP III (2021/22 -2025/26) until its launch June, 2021.

Given the importance of the multi stakeholders involvement towards realizing FYDP III aspirations, Policy Forum , UNA Tanzania, and HakiRasilimali hosted a session titled “Non-State Actors and the FYDP III: Opportunities for Transformative Collaboration” during CSO week that will deep dive on the same. The session engaged the Ministry of Finance and Planning, The Tanzanian Private Sector Forum and National Council for NGOs each acknowledging the role of Civil Society in development.

UNA Tanzania Executive Director and co-convener of Tanzania Sustainable Development Platform, Mr Reynald Maeda, explained on how the TSDP coordinated CSOs during FYDP III consultations in line with thematic areas such as Gender, Agriculture, Youth, Education, Health, Governance, Accountability etc. He then finished by narrating TSDP initiatives geared toward the FYDP III implementation, monitoring and review as follows;

• Simplified/popular version of the FYDP III
• A Toolkit for Localization of the SDGs through FYDP III implementation in LGAs
• Protocols to integrate civil society data as part of official statistics
• Policy Brief on Youth engagement in the implementation of FYDP III

Greetings from the Secretariat.

We are pleased to announce our Extra- Ordinary Annual General Meeting 2021 to be on Saturday, 20th November 2021 in Dar es Salaam.

This is for the members of our 8 branches across the country. Kindly confirm your participation by 20th October 2021.

Regards,

UNA Tanzania Team.

Climate change has been recognized as a global pandemic caused by both natural causes and humans activities which are increasingly influencing the pandemic through burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and farming livestock among other causes. One of the effects is sea level rise which causes saltwater intrusion into fertile lands and human settlements resulting in a threat to food security among other effects.

This has been evidently seen in Kengeja, Pemba Island where UNA Tanzania has been working with the community since 2016 in dealing with salt water intrusion which is largely contributed by human activities such as sand extraction and cutting down trees (mangrove trees). Salt water intrusion has caused several challenges to Kengeja communities such as reduction of agricultural production, flooding, family evacuation, famine, low income and difficulties in keeping livestock.

Since then, several efforts have been put into place to ensure Kengeja people are involved in climate actions. One of the vivid examples is planting of 10,000 mangrove trees at “Mfuuni valley,” “Ukunda valley” and “Mchangani valley” places which are largely affected by saltwater intrusion. UNA Tanzania mobilized community members with different economic status, social difference, age and sex in the process of planting the mangrove trees. The mangrove trees plantation involved more than two thousand (2000) people from five (5) villages that to us counts as a collective community action to implement the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNA Tanzania has been focusing on mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in Kengeja including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities. For example, revamping environmental school clubs is one of the efforts done by UNA Tanzania with the objective of educating future generations about the importance of environmental protection and how they might face bigger challenges than the current generation if further steps won’t be taken. These clubs were formed from 10 primary schools with over 500 hundred members.

As a mechanism to integrate climate change measures during the process of local planning, Local Government Authorities (LGAs) position is inevitable. UNA Tanzania revived 4 Local LGAs environmental committees with each having 12 members (48 in total). The committees closely manage different areas against environmental perpetrators who mostly cut trees for economic purposes without planting new ones.

In order to successfully reduce salt water intrusion, community members should keep planting mangrove trees and raising awareness amongst themselves about environmental protection, however it has to be known that everyone needs to be involved in the process including Private sector, Community Based Organisations, Civil Society Organizations, Media and the Government.

Below is a picture showing how salt water has affected communities’ farms where nothing can grow:

A family photo with the community members and UNA Tanzania.