Who Cares? A tanzanian and German youth exchange

12 people from all over Germany arrive at Julius Nyerere Airport in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on Friday, September 1st. They are greeted by their Tanzanian counterparts and head for their accommodation for the next couple of days. This is the start of a three week exchange programme focused on community work and interactions. The group wants to share thoughts, points of view and opinions across borders and cultures.

The project is called “Who Cares?” and that’s exactly what we will be asking ourselves for the next weeks.

Tanzania Youth Coalition in collaboration with MitOst Hamburg is organizing an educational and topical youth focused exchange program under the theme of: “WHO CARES ABOUT OUR COMMON FUTURE?” The exchange program will take place in Tanzania and Germany and it will last for a period of two years starting in September 2023 and ending in August/September 2024. Participants from both Tanzania and Germany will spend three weeks living together in shared spaces in Dar es Salaam, Lushoto and Zanzibar in 2023, and another three weeks in 2024 in Hamburg, Germany.

The aim of the exchange is to discuss and design around topics that guide us towards defining how we live together as Germans and Tanzanians as a multinational group in a shared world, and also how to manage the way we live together practically. We will consider and experience the Tanzanian and German ways of living together that lead us to embrace our diversity, and informal living arrangements at the community level and through our different cultures. We will also explore and trace the roots and causes of current modes of living together, integrating questions about our history and our ways of life. The experience will be captured over the two-year period in individual journals as “Stories”, that will be produced to present the educational aspect of this discovery of how we live together at the end of the exchange.

Who cares about inequality?

Who cares about cultural exchange?

Who cares about youth empowerment?

Who cares about climate change?

Who cares about human rights?

We started out as a group of strangers but now, after four days, we’re not strangers anymore. We’ve gotten to know each other, discussed, eaten, danced and most importantly lived together.

We’re excited to see what the next two and a half weeks will bring and how we will grow as a group.