Fema Clubbers Descend on Dar

Safe Lights and income generation were the focus of this year’s Youth Conference.

Femina HIP’s 2010 Youth Conference was a three-day dynamic mix of celebration, commemoration, profoundness, and innovation. About 100 Fema Club members and some teachers from across Tanzania were in Dar es Salaam last week to discuss this year’s theme: “From Life Skills to Livelihood: Promoting Entrepreneurship Education in School Settings”,

The conference was opened by the guest of honour, Dr. Milton Makongoro Mahanga, Deputy Minister for Labour, Employment and Youth Development.

The Honourable Deputy Minster praised Femina HIP for efforts to encourage students to create and develop ways to generate income in the school setting, through Fema clubs, as a way to gain life skills and strengthen their independence and resilience against engaging in risky sexual behaviour.

Awards were presented to the Fema Club of the Year, Fema Teacher of the Year, Femina HIP Ambassadors, and the winners of an essay competition organised by Femina HIP and the solar company D.light, about solar entrepreneurship.

The Right to Safe Lights campaign, also a collaboration between D.light and Femina HIP, was launched on day one, bringing with it some of the most profound moments of the conference. A moment of silence took place to remember the 12 schoolchildren who perished in the school fires that originated from a candle at Idodi Secondary School in Iringa last August. Fema clubbers also enacted a skit during which the conference hall lights were dimmed and two students read by candlelight before they blew out the flames and the dark hall was lit up by fellow clubbers with solar lamps.

Renown poet Mrisho Mpoto and his band, Mjomba Band, performed a song for the campaign, emphasising the sad and disturbing reality of the risk to students using candlelight to study at night. Mpoto is the ambassador the Right To Safe Lights campaign.

In addition to workshops, discussions and group work, the students also had some recreational time to play sports, dance and visit Femina HIP’s office in the city centre.