Our MasterPeace club in Cameroon, Hope for a Better future, together with local partners Sopisdew and FAP launched a training centre for renewable energy in Bamenda.

The clubleader, Ngo Abdulai Banfogha noticed a gap in skills of trainers (and therefore of students) to enter the job market in renewable energies. Expertise as well as equipment comes in from abroad. Why not invest in local expertise and capacity? Thus, a project idea was born.

The first phase of the project (run by H4BF) was sponsored by Turing Foundation. Thanks to their support, experience was created and the first training sessions were given.

Building on this success, H4BF developed a new project together with 2 local and 2 European partners: Cameroon Renewed. This project is sponsored by the European Union.

The aim is to strengthen the capacities of vocational training institutes and enhance the collaboration between the partners in EU and Cameroon. As a result 9 trainers will be trained and over 200 youths in renewable energies over the next 2 years. Exchanges between students and teachers from Cameroon and Europe are part of the project.
The training project titled « Cameroon Renewed » is being implemented by Hope for A Better Future (H4BF) and supported by three European Union organizations (Noorderpoort, APRO, and MasterPeace) and two other organizations in Cameroon (FAP and SOPISDEW).
The project was launched on Wednesday, March 23 at the HOBEFI center in Bamenda in the presence of the Divisional Officer of Bamenda 1 Sub Division, the Mayor of Bamenda 1 Council, the Regional Delegate of Vocational Training, and other administrative and local officials likewise representatives of development and humanitarian agencies in the North West region.
The objective of the project is to improve and increase the capacity of vocational education teachers and trainers; to boost their exposure using 21st-century and innovative renewable energy blended vocational education materials.
The primary target groups of the project include vocational education organizations and teachers, youths within the age group of 16-30 years, (60% female/40% male), employees of business partners, the private sector, local decision-makers and other etc.
At the end therefore, we intend to have 9 trainers trained and 200 students trained who will create personal business plans hosted by 25 businesses.

By this project the partners in Cameroon are creating perspective to the youngsters, providing them with engineering skills that are needed by the labour market.

Gender Equality issues are one of the SDG pillars, and one of MasterPeace Ethiopia concerns!

In the week of the 8 march, they celebrated the International Women's Day in Ethiopia, by organizing a virtual dialogue and experience exchange event using the Telegram platform.

The targeted group was 35 participants between (18-35 age) and the objective of the activity was to empower women (youth) through Music, poem and Dialogue, and for sure To celebrate International Women’s Day !

L4G has a Youth Dialogue and Experience Exchange program that is held weekly on Sunday. Therefore, they collaborated and organized that event to celebrate March 8 and to empower women. Within a Dialogue and Experience Exchange Session, addressing questions like "What is the impact of celebrating March 8? Is it helpful to empower our women or not? What are the realities here in Ethiopia besides celebrating Women's Day every year on March 8?

January 26th brought together people from Morocco, Croatia, Kosovo, and Lebanon, all together in the Netherlands, in Utrecht. But why did some people have to travel more than 4000 kilometers and meet other colleagues from different cultures? But why did some travel more than 4000 kilometers to connect with colleagues from other cultures? 

Young people all over the world are facing different challenges; therefore, two non-governmental organizations from the Balkan region, two from the Middle East, and one from Western Europe will collaborate over the next 24 months to develop innovative methods to engage, connect and empower young people to promote social inclusion and prevent climate challenges and lack of job prospects.

As we work together to engage, connect, and empower young people outside formal education, we will learn, evaluate, develop, and implement innovative non-formal education (NFE) formats.

After months of working together and meeting online, several of us finally met in person. Utrecht, a smaller Amsterdam, a lovely and chilly city at the time, helped us develop our action plan for the DouAct project.

We began our discussion by choosing photographs representing ourselves and our project goal. Everyone picked their favorite pictures, which were spread out on the floor. Hope and motivation could be seen. The participants discussed why they chose the photographs they did and what they hoped to get out of this fantastic project.

Furthermore, the MasterPeace office in the Netherlands reintroduced the project, and other partners soon began the discussion with further questions about project implementation. After COVID-19, everyone was so excited to talk face to face, discuss the project in-depth, and finally have the opportunity to start a project without restrictions. 

Partners discussed their roles and duties, while MasterPeace presented their advanced non-formal education (NFE) formats. These NFEs are among the most effective tools for working with youth and empowering youth workers. LUMEN of Croatia also showed their NFE formats. They provided the participants with various resources and discussed their experiences working with young workers and young people in Croatia.

LDN from Lebanon presented their communication and dissemination planning. Their fantastic work in Lebanon enables them to support the implementation of the project in all other countries. Together we agreed on some tools and approaches we will use during the implementation of DouAct. 

Following that, we learned more about cross-cultural team collaboration and communication. Collaborating is tough when all participants come from diverse cultures, countries, and continents. Participants had the opportunity to get to know each other culture by sharing their experiences on one topic that the groups selected. Some groups talked about the respect of older people in their culture and how we have been raised in our families and societies. We recognized that our cultures differed, but we also discovered certain similarities. We choose a partner to observe how a lack of communication may cause problems when we ask each other for something. It was difficult to express things to your partner when they couldn't ask questions and had to sketch everything you said. It was a lot of fun, and we learned much about each other.

We spent the evening exploring the lovely city of Utrecht. As Aart always says, "Beer tastes better when you win," so we celebrated our friendships and partnership in the evening by raising a toast to each other and enjoying the delicious Dutch food.

Those two days went fast, but they helped us get to know each other better and understand the project and our duties. In the following months, we will work hard in our communities while implementing the project. We will meet many youth workers and young people. The most important thing is that we will impact our societies, connecting young people, empowering them through promoting social inclusion, preventing climate dilemmas, and expanding job opportunities. 

Golden Boots Uganda-GoBU is nonprofit NGO empowering young people to build resilience, secure their future through sport, and become change agents in their communities.

The organization was selected as one of the 10 beneficiaries of the Sport for One Humanity initiative by Turkish Airlines with support from United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).
As one of the selected applicants, the organization is benefiting from a comprehensive capacity-development training program.

As part of this program, the CEO, Mr. Mo Kisirisa was also invited to participate in a side event celebrating the 'Sport for One Humanity' initiative within the framework of the 9th UNAOC Global Forum in Fez, Morocco on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2022, at the Marriott Jnan Palace Hotel and Euromed University.

During the Global Forum, Mr. Mo, participated in a series of discussions including the Youth Consultation - Policy Recommendations Report on Preventing Violent Extremism through Sport, Working group on “Investing in youth: Building peace through sport”, “Sport as a vector for peace and inclusiveness and the UNAOC Youth Forum: “The future they want: an inter-generational dialogue” .

Here is a video done by Ani Zonneveld from Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4ttT5FtS4