One of the main goals of our project here in Arusha was to organize an International Youth Day event, and today it happened!
The plan: We got a great venue (the Via Via Cafe) which has some great outdoor space and a stage! We invited a number of local NGOs who focus on youth to come and put up a booth. We also had our four Small Business Development students come and discuss the business plans we'd developed with them. We had some students of the Umoja Centre prepare poetry and Skits and all of the students were going to sing 'I can go the Distance' from Disney's Hercules and 'Lean on Me'.
It was off to a slightly rocky start. We aimed to start at 1pm, however, there were VERY few people who appeared to be interested. We tried some different advertisement tactics (handing out fliers to people walking down the street and trying to convince them to come), however it didn't seem to be working. We were all very worried.
After an hour of waiting for people to arrive, we decided that the show must go on, and people would come whenever they did. Once the event started it quickly picked up steam. At first there were 10 audience members and by the end there were approximately 150!!! It was a HUGELY successful event!
I had two favourite parts.
The first was a poem that was read, titled Change Your World. It was written by an incredibly talented Umoja Student. I had heard his poetry a week before and asked him to write a poem for Youth Day. Earlier in the week, I asked him if I could hear it and read it, and see if he needed help with his English. He told me it wasn't finished and he wasn't happy with it. He read it to me, and I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but this was fantastic. It gave me goosebumps how great it was! I'll get a copy of it and post it to my blog later this week, I still can't get over how great it was. Especially considering that English is his SECOND language.
The second was a rap that some youth had decided to present. The rap was in Swahili, so unfortunately the majority of its lyrics were lost on me, but the majority of the crowd went WILD. This was the turning moment in our day, things went from kind of slow and normal to OFF THE WALL AWESOME. The rap was given by two youth (from Initiative for Youth Org) however within about 30 seconds, 3 other students jumped in to help out. They put on an impromptu dance and fought for control of the microphone. The enthusiasm to entertain was my favourite part.
We also learned a few things for planning an event here in Arusha, Tanzania:
1 - Tell people you're starting an hour earlier than you actually are. Its not nice to lie, but they'll probably be late anyways...just not as late!
2 - Attract people with music! Everyone here is so curious and when they hear or see something out of the ordinary they usually check it out (which is probably why everyone is late all the time). By playing loud music people will seek out the source and attend the event.
3 - Embrace Spontaneity. Impromptu dance party? Sure!
Our International Youth Day event was a HUGE success. We attracted a huge crowd, and next year YCI can hopefully attract an even bigger one! Maybe enough people to fill the stadium!
I'm so happy to have this event be my last real task here in Arusha. It was a huge success and will be one of my favourite memories of Africa!
Again, I have about 1200 pictures and videos to share, however with the Internet being so awful, they'll come at a later date!
Kwa Heri!
-Matt
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