I came to Uganda to work as an Inspirator (Volunteer) in ActionAid International on mid of July 2013. My focus area is to work with ActionAid Local Rights Program office and its partners to enhance the capacity on Monitoring Evaluation and Advocacy. When I came to the Kapchorwa (my duty station in Estern Uganda). I started to my work and started to look for the possibility to work with young people.
I had been worked in the youth organization in Nepal and I am very intrested to explore the chances of volunteerism. When I came here, I found some possibilities to engage young people toward the social issue. One day before to start the "16 days campaign against Gender Based Violence". I was met with my colleague and shared them my ideas to engage young people in this campaign.
They easily accepted but the question is how we can engage the youths. Then I create some ideas: these are my ideas to engage young people in this campaign as a volunteer.
1. Identify the potential 16 youth from the Kapchorwa town.
2. Mobilize them to distribute the White ribbon (symbol against GBV), signature campaign and public sensitization
According to this idea, we made an action plan and identified those youth. I coordinated for the orientation, in the orientation we told them about the 16 days campaign, its massage and the importance of the "White Ribbon".
I call those youth to the office and show them how to make "white ribbon". When they started to work they were became very queries about the White ribbon and about the campaign. They asked me some questions about the campaign and volunteerism. I demonstrate some visual documentaries using YouTube and other website about the youth engagement in social issue as well as how we can promote the volunteerism.
After the orientation, I went with them to the local government office. Where they conducted the "White ribbon" campaign. Before go to that place I helped them to identify the team leader, chose the person to who can tell about the campaign, who can tell about the importance of white ribbon. According to that, they chose their leaders. They started with the District Government Chief, they briefed about the campaign and White ribbon too. After the meeting, they went to other around seven government offices, held the campaign, and distributed more than 75 "white ribbon".
When we were conducting that campaign, other peoples are also attracted and gave their commitment to join the campaign also; they appreciated the youth for carrying this campaign. When the youths are got such types of response from them, they are very excited.
After completion of these activities, we had a review meeting in that meeting they said they got such types of chance to engage themselves in the public campaign. I think the youth are driven power, they have energy, synergy and vision too. If we can drive them in to the right direction, we can make some changes for the world.
For more photos of the campaign please follow this link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.598056116922305&type=1
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