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Annual
Report: 2006
Young Africa
May 2007
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The year 2006
was a year of change for Young Africa, a new step towards self-sustenance
and a step towards international expansion. Dorien Beurskens and
Raj Joseph, the founders of Young Africa and the project coordinators
of the Young Africa Skills Centre in Chitungwiza since it opened
its doors in 2001, saw it time to expand the proven success of the
Young Africa concept to a neighbouring country in need. They chose
Mozambique as the second Young Africa country, and the harbour city
Beira for setting up another Young Africa Skills Centre. They left
Young Africa Zimbabwe in good hands, still being part of the Board
of Trustees, and the team was strengthened with the arrival of Yvette
Bellens-Bosma in June 2006. Yvette came in as the capacity building
advisor, on a contract with ICCO (Dutch development organisation),
to guide the Young Africa staff, Head of Departments (HoD's) as
well as the boards towards full self-sustenance.
With the departure
of Dorien and Raj, also an era ended in which Young Africa supplied
the departments with machines, parts and tools and equipment from
overseas. With this new step towards self-sustenance, the departments
have to look replacement or adding of machines and equipment themselves.
Young Africa administration can support them in this, but the responsibility
is now with the departments. A good example of this is that the
Commercial School and Computer Centre combined forces and successfully
applied for refurbished computers from Computer Aid International,
with transport and handling costs being covered by the Royal Netherlands
Embassy.
One of the
weaknesses noticed which slows down or even threaten the selfsustenance
of Young Africa was the incapability of some Heads of Departments
to run a viable business. Raj and Dorien had already made some adjustments
towards the criteria for new Heads of Departments. This was further
accentuated by Yvette: new Heads of Departments need to be established
entrepreneurs with good records and marketing skills, preferably
with an existing market for both products and job/attachment creation
for the students, they need to have access to capital to make required
capital investments (e.g. employ staff, buy raw materials, service
machines etc.), and they need to be able to put in a collateral
for taking up the workshop and machinery and equipment. Existing
Heads of Departments have been given up to 2007 to produce a collateral
for using the workshop and machinery and equipment. The latter measure
is taken because in the past Young Africa had problems with Heads
of Departments neglecting maintenance of machines and workshop,
running them down until they were of no more use to them. Then they
suddenly disappeared, leaving Young Africa with huge costs for repairing
the machines and getting the workshop back in proper state for a
new HoD to take it up. In addition to this, often small tools went
disappearing, which is why Young Africa introduced a deposit on
renting the workshop.
All in all,
the take over went very smoothly. A number of meetings were held
with staff and HoD's to get to know each other better, to
do an analysis of staff and HoD's perceptions of strengths
and weaknesses of YASC and their own departments, as well as opportunities
and threats, and a code of conduct was introduced for everybody
to abide to.
With the inflation
in 2006 being officially at 1600% most departments struggled to
survive. Just like in 2005, Young Africa chose to remain close to
its mission, which is to develop the underprivileged youth, and
to do so for a very reasonable fee. Since a number of the departments
are largely dependent on these school fees (academics, commercial
school, computer centre and crèche), it is not realistic
to raise the rents more than the school fees. In addition, Yvette
being new to this level of inflation, the rents were not corrected
for the period October - December 2006, with the result that
by the end of the year, income from rentals was quite low. Total
contribution of the department to the running costs of Young Africa
in 2006 is 22 percent.
Young Africa
still needs to go a long way towards full self-sustenance, both
in local management as well as in financial donor independence.
Especially with the current inflation going towards 3000%(!), donor
support is still needed. On the other hand, the number of beneficiaries
is on the increase again. As we write this, more students are coming
to YASC than ever before. Young Africa has build up a very good
name and is recognised and spoken fond of over the whole country.
Many past students show their appreciation and gratitude and come
with beautiful stories how Young Africa improved their lives.
The future of
Africa is with the young of Africa, and especially in these challenging
days we are grateful that we can give these young people hope and
help them build a future which can look forward to.
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