The following is an article that was published a few weeks ago in the East African Business Week on GYPA. Although Ben created a few facts (I was never a "research fellow" for the Corporate Council on Africa!), he wrote a great article that articulates the value of GYPA programs.

East African Business Week; Unveiling Opportunities

How Uganda, American youth syndicate could create jobs opportunities
Monday, 26 February 2007

By Ben Moses Ilakut

Before Katie Spencer, 22, visited Southern Africa about four years ago, her perception of Africa was probably not fully formed, but her first visit turned her childhood dreams about Africa into a life and career line. So when she returned home-Minesotta, USA, she started studying Health Development with a focus on Africa.

“Even as a child I was obsessed about Africa. Each time I did a child's project it was always this and that on Africa...this and that on African this and that...,” says Katie.

And when she completed school she worked at the Corporate Council on Africa as a research fellow on HIV Aids Policies in Africa.

This saw her do research work in Kenya first in 2004 for 4 months and again in 2005. It was about this time that Katie learnt about the Global Youth Partnership for Africa (GYPA), a programme that links American and African youth. She left her job and started fulltime volunteer work for GYPA in August 2006, then visited Uganda in January 2007.

Halle Butvin, 25, from Ohio USA, first came to Uganda in June 2006. A friend at the American University had sent her an e-mail describing GYPA.

Halle’s first impression of Uganda was the conflict in the northern part of the country. She then took to reading about the conflict from NGO websites and wire articles. Butvin is a financial manager in Washington DC at the American Institute for Research.

Each time she gets vacations she commits most of the time into working for GYPA. And her motivation: “I always wanted to do something in the area of international development.”

This January, Halle and Katie were among the 20 plus American youth who visited Uganda and descended on the streets of Gulu-face-to-face with Ugandan friends whom they only knew by name.

“Two weeks ago, you were just a list of names, but here now I am looking you in the eye and talking to you,” said Rebecca, one of the participants and website designer at a meeting at Makerere University Business in Kampala recently.

The Global Youth Partnership for Africa (GYPA) was born from Project Namuwongo Zone B (PNZB), a commuity based organisation legally registered in Uganda in October 2003 and co-founded by an American, Mr Jeremy M. Goldberg, then 22 years old and a Ugandan, Mr Joseph Bagambaki, then 33.

While working with a variety of college students in the United States, Germany, Israel and Uganda, the Namuwongo Zone leadership was re-empowered and sought to connect youth from other continents to understand the challenges of their counterparts in Africa.

According to GYPA cordinator Mr Josh Golstein, GYPA is premised on the understanding that youth of the world can engage in activities that support the people of other countries; and promote efforts to respond to the humanitarian issues facing the entire globe.

Katie entirely believes in this: “The partnership provides an opportunity for mutual benefit. Ugandan youth meet with American youth and share experiences and the Americans help to link them up to people who can fund their activities,” she says.

One youth who is bound to benefit from this interaction is Abraham Tekya (popularly known among Ugandan artistes as Abramz), 24.

Abramz is into socially conscious hip-hop music and dance, incorporating health messages to inspire youth to live economically active lives. He started the Break Dance Project Uganda in February 2006, largely inspired by a background of lack.

Having failed to continue school for lack of school fees, he deeply believed he would use talent to make a change in his life, and perhaps, change others.

The project uses break-dance as a tool for social change by bringing youth and children together to share ideas and create employment.

In November 2006, the project introduced another dance team in Gulu in northern Uganda. About 120 children are already attending break-dance classes in Gulu and trainers travel from Kampala to Gulu every month to impart skills to the post conflict teenagers.

And thanks to the French embassy, on March 23 some of the children will perform at the French Cultural Day at Ndere Centre in Kampala.

Now GYPA could open wider horizons for the group.

Says Abramz: “During the Second Global Kimeeza, a number of American youth visited us during training sessions and discussed the project with us and sharpened our perspective. Katie Spencer for example, documented our activities on CD slides. We use them for display and she has taken some to the US for advocacy and has promised to link us up with people who can help fund our activities.”

Already, says Abramz, some US students are organising fundraising activities at various universities to support the project.

The January 2007 visit by 13 Americans, and their coming in contact with over 23 Ugandans was a culmination into the Global Kimeeza, a word coined from Luganda.

In small groups, these youth worked together with regional experts to discuss youth as peacebuilders, justice and forgiveness, poverty relief and economic development. The two-week-long conference concluded with the Global Kimeeza II Action Statement, a document that serves both as a pledge to action for those who drafted it and as a model for other youth who are searching for ways to get involved in the reconstruction and reconciliation processes.

Kimeeza is the Luganda word for “big discussion table”. Most of the members are university students and those who have just started working.

GYPA youth have made various other attempts to bring meaning to the communities they have come in contact with.

GYPA has been syndicating an arrangement where crafts women in Namuwongo, a Kampala suburb find worthy US markets for their produce.

The women initiated a sustainable micro-finance programme, with support from the GYPA staff.

Many of them were driven from their homes in the north by the prolonged conflict and accompanying abuse of civilians. Many have only basic levels of education and few other resources at their disposal. HIV prevalence levels are high in this community, and women strive to earn money through various jobs to support themselves.

GYPA established an office where all the women do their hand work. Volunteers help them to develop their business projects: Some fashion jewelry out of paper beads, some weave cloth material, and others make dolls or table maps.

Halle and Katie think the crafts can fetch more money for the women if they marketed them online, a project that they would be willing to undertake by first designing a website for the women’s group.

But GYPA is a one sided bid, meant to benefit only Ugandans.

“It is mutual,” says Halle. “American scholars have too much theory; they need to contextualise their knowledge by coming face to face with peoples of the world, meet them, and talk to them so as to provide a context to their careers. When I return home I am going to influence many American youth to come here and make a contribution.”