Clare and Dalila

I went over to the Plan office by bus/train this morning. I love the public transportation system in Holland and all the bicycles. Such a difference from most places that are all about cars! I met first with Chris and Klaas about the “Sponsorship 2.0” or now know as “Plan Live” concept. Klaas is really into coffee and had bought a new coffee maker, which was really noisy….

At 11 I met with this great youth group called Child Rights Watch that Plan Netherlands supports. They’ve made a quiz for organizations and elected officials that determines, according to the Convention on Child Rights (CRC), what their child friendliness is by how they assign budget and attention to children’s issues. They are really geared up and want to help re-connect with the different youth groups and child/youth advisory boards within Plan. I’m going to link them up with the team at Plan US so that they can get something going together.

In the afternoon I met with Maud from the grants team to talk about potential youth media projects we’re working on in West Africa to see if they may be interested in working on any funding for the region.

Around 4 I took the train over to War Child where my friend Clare works. War Child’s office is in this totally cool part of Amsterdam in an old church. I met Clare in Brazil at the World Congress on Child Sexual Exploitation (WC3) when we worked together on the Child and Adolescent Participation Commission. She’s totally cool and we really bonded. Clare gave me a quick tour and we walked over to pick up her daughter Dalila who is around 7, and Dalila’s friend Sammy. From there we walked to Clare’s little apartment, freshened up and went out for pizza. Such a great neighborhood! And I love that we could walk everywhere.

Photo: Clare and Dalila on this cool blue and white steep staircase

Amsterdam, Voices of Africa

I left for Bamako on Feb 4th in the evening with a stopover in Amsterdam to meet with colleagues there, and also to meet with the Voices of Africa Media Foundation (VoAMF) to see about possible collaboration. The flight was easy and I got in to Amsterdam Central Station around 9 a.m., checked into the hotel Terminus, and then Klaas, Plan’s Innovations Manager, came by to meet me around 11.30. We had some coffee and went out to Harlaam to VoAMF.

There we met with Pim the founder, and Henri, the co-founder. They run a mobile reporters training program for young Africans. They give them a mobile phone and a training on how to do good, short reporting with it. Then they pay them a sum if they complete 8 reporting assignments a month. 4 are specific, and 4 are assignments where the reporters can choose their topics. They also train them on how to manage assignments from Western journalist. The main point behind the VoAMF is that Africans should be reporting on Africa rather than foreigners, and they try to build up capacity of young Africans to do just that. Their training package goes for about 6 months, with the participants sending in their stories, which are critiqued, re-edited and the published on Africa News Network. (www.africanews.org). We are talking about various scenarios where we might partner together on some different types of training.

I had dinner with Nanneke from the Dutch Plan office. We worked together in the past on the Global Youth Engagement Framework and on Development Education. There are lots of cool links between our work both with youth and youth boards in the US and with the youth media work in W. Africa. One topic of conversation tonight, and it seems everywhere I go, is Obama and what it means that he’s been elected, and what he will do for the world.