Youth Democracy and Governance Project
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Rise up, reach out and connect as a strategy for youth Democracy and Governance, a project ran by KIWOHEDE with the sponsorship from Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).
KIWOHEDE organized a workshop on democracy and governance, youth gained skills and empowered with knowledge to convey message without fear through debates, dialogue, discussion to create awareness to the community for the coming election campaign which will be held in late October 2010, on which they will full participate to make sure that clean candidates should be elected.
They organized an open discussion on “How transport affects students on and off to school”. 60 youth participated in the discussion which was leaded by 2 youth who performed well and made the discussion alive.
Youth were divided into two groups; one group was concentrated on the root cause of the problem, while the others were looking for the possible solution.
Group One:
- One girl claimed that they are being mistreated by commuter buses/daladala workers who are drivers and conductors. They don’t allow them to go into daladala; they are being thrown away and even fighting with them which cause injuries or even death to students. It is like a battle between students and commuter workers.
- Another boy said when daladala passes through different bus stands, when they find a group of students they don’t stop at the bus stop they ignoring them as the results they late to school and missing some of the periods and also are being punished by their teachers. He said if the student manages to catch the daladala is lucky, but still will face abusive language, remained standing even if there are empty seats.
- Another girl told audience how she got fight with the daladala conductor in front of people without any help from them.
Students are experiencing a difficult or tough life throughout their learning process due to poor means of transport.
Group Two:
Tentative or possible solution
- “Transport for students it is a chronic disease which has no cure in our country, I tell the President to use his power at all levels to make sure this problem is coming to an end” said one of the participants.
- Governance failed to provide school busses for students. It should be blamed
- Parents are advised to take their children to the nearest primary schools where they live, and for the Secondary students, there is no alternative because most of them are being selected to join different secondary schools in different palaces so they have to use daladala.
Side effect of poor transport in Dar es Salaam
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- Students are being affected physically during the process of catching buses by sustaining multiple injuries like broken which can result to amputation of some of the limbs and sometimes death.
- Sometimes they are being abused sexually especially girls by those workers by touching them in different parties of their bodies or even dating them which causes early Pregnancies, abortion and drop out from schools.
- They are also affected psychologically and emotionally by abusive languages which can lead to poor performance n the studies.
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The youth had decided that during campaign they will make sure that they will be available to each campaign to create awareness on democracy and governance to the public including holding accountable the candidates and parties to talk about issues of their concern such as transport, \economic, project’s security and sports.