Donnerstag, 3. November 2011
Our Visit to the UNESCO-Office in Dar
helene-reist, 18:00h
Today our teachers Mr Mattlinger and Mrs Stremmel and the eight of us students, as the representatives of the oldest UNESCO-school in Germany the Helene-Lange Gymnasium, met Mrs Mushi, the ex-principal of the Unesco Kiluvya Secondary School, Mrs Mangovy, a teacher at Kiluvya and Mrs Ngulu, the vice principal of our partnerschol. We went to the Tanzanian UNESCO office and had a meeting with the sympathetic natural science program officer Mr Samuel.
After introducing ourselves in the conference room Mr Samuel asked us about the partnership of our schools. Mrs Mushi explained that the contact between the two schools started via internet. In 2006 Mr Mattlinger, Mrs Strocka and Mr Serbser visited Kiluvya with three students for the first time. The next visits followed in 2008 and 2009. We finally got Tanzanian guests in 2010. Mrs Mushi got the inspiration of Kiluvya becoming an UNESCO-school on this trip to Germany after seeing German UNESCO work, but by now the UNESCO club at Kiluvya is even more active. The fact that the inspiration came from Germany and not from the Tanzanian UNESCO was a good example for the problem Mr Samuel has to face: the missing visuality of UNESCO in Tanzania, especially at schools. Afterwards he gave us the opportunity to ask questions. We were interested in ongoing projects about the city partnership of Dar Es Salaam and Hamburg and the number of UNESCO-schools in Tanzania. Unfortunately one school building project failed, because it was just one person in charge of it. Mr Samuel mentioned that in general responsibility over a project should be distributed among a group of people in contrast to only one with which the project rises or falls. For the second question he told us that there are actually around fifty UNESCO-schools in Tanzania, but only sixteen of them seem to be really active. So we started to collect ideas how to expand and improve the partnerships. We formulated steps to be done in the future which include creating a homepage for Kiluvya-Helene Lange partnership to interchange information such as texts, music, videos and pictures. The main idea of partnerships of schools in Hamburg and Dar Es Salaam should be supported as well. Other schools could be motivated to start a partnership and could take the Helene-Lange-Kiluvya partnership as a role model. The homepage could be a medium for that by showing contacts and field reports. Mrs Mushi suggested establishing an office in the two cities to institutionalize the cooperation. We thought about the way of dealing with partnership itself. We concluded that a partnership and the resulting exchange should come from the engagement of students and their over continental friendships between them and not only a few responsible teachers. On the one hand the host of an exchange should try the best to make the guest feel comfortable but on the other side he should try to stick his normal habits. Mr Samuel explained to us that it is a common phenomenon that a host tries to adapt the lifestyle of the guest to make him feel convenient. So we as the ones who experience this exchange should learn from this and pass this on to following exchange students. Before our goodbye picture Mr Samuel introduced some other UNESCO-projects to us such as the Youth Forum, where young people meet at the UNESCO office in order to discuss current issues and later go to other schools for sharing their thoughts and knowledge. The project that seemed high priority to the highly educated Mr Samuel was the STI4W (Science Technology Information for Women), where women get encouraged to study sciences.
We really hope that we will be successful in sharing our experience in Germany so that this partnership of our countries, cities and schools will be expanded and improved.
After introducing ourselves in the conference room Mr Samuel asked us about the partnership of our schools. Mrs Mushi explained that the contact between the two schools started via internet. In 2006 Mr Mattlinger, Mrs Strocka and Mr Serbser visited Kiluvya with three students for the first time. The next visits followed in 2008 and 2009. We finally got Tanzanian guests in 2010. Mrs Mushi got the inspiration of Kiluvya becoming an UNESCO-school on this trip to Germany after seeing German UNESCO work, but by now the UNESCO club at Kiluvya is even more active. The fact that the inspiration came from Germany and not from the Tanzanian UNESCO was a good example for the problem Mr Samuel has to face: the missing visuality of UNESCO in Tanzania, especially at schools. Afterwards he gave us the opportunity to ask questions. We were interested in ongoing projects about the city partnership of Dar Es Salaam and Hamburg and the number of UNESCO-schools in Tanzania. Unfortunately one school building project failed, because it was just one person in charge of it. Mr Samuel mentioned that in general responsibility over a project should be distributed among a group of people in contrast to only one with which the project rises or falls. For the second question he told us that there are actually around fifty UNESCO-schools in Tanzania, but only sixteen of them seem to be really active. So we started to collect ideas how to expand and improve the partnerships. We formulated steps to be done in the future which include creating a homepage for Kiluvya-Helene Lange partnership to interchange information such as texts, music, videos and pictures. The main idea of partnerships of schools in Hamburg and Dar Es Salaam should be supported as well. Other schools could be motivated to start a partnership and could take the Helene-Lange-Kiluvya partnership as a role model. The homepage could be a medium for that by showing contacts and field reports. Mrs Mushi suggested establishing an office in the two cities to institutionalize the cooperation. We thought about the way of dealing with partnership itself. We concluded that a partnership and the resulting exchange should come from the engagement of students and their over continental friendships between them and not only a few responsible teachers. On the one hand the host of an exchange should try the best to make the guest feel comfortable but on the other side he should try to stick his normal habits. Mr Samuel explained to us that it is a common phenomenon that a host tries to adapt the lifestyle of the guest to make him feel convenient. So we as the ones who experience this exchange should learn from this and pass this on to following exchange students. Before our goodbye picture Mr Samuel introduced some other UNESCO-projects to us such as the Youth Forum, where young people meet at the UNESCO office in order to discuss current issues and later go to other schools for sharing their thoughts and knowledge. The project that seemed high priority to the highly educated Mr Samuel was the STI4W (Science Technology Information for Women), where women get encouraged to study sciences.
We really hope that we will be successful in sharing our experience in Germany so that this partnership of our countries, cities and schools will be expanded and improved.
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