By Delicious Mathuthu
Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) Social and Economic Justice Ambassadors (SEJAs) recently converged in Gokwe (Central Region), for a two day Ideas Festival seeking to find possible solutions to continuing social and economic challenges, injustices and available opportunities, especially among women and youths.
The festival saw about 35 SEJAs from Gokwe, Goromonzi, Matobo and Kwekwe converge at Gokwe South’s Shingai Training Centre to proffer solutions and learn from each other on climate change issues, movement building, inclusion, sound public finance management, among others.
The Ideas Festival also served as a platform for ideas exchange among ZIMCODD officials and participating SEJA trainees on how to generate conversations and discourses that promote idea harvesting.
The organisation targets to reach approximately 1 500 women and youth through a snowball technique from the initial 35.
Speaking to Kwedu News, one of the SEJAs from ZIMCODD Central Region, Mike Makore, said the Ideas Festival was an eye opener.
“Participants gathered from different regions of the country and we had cross-pollination of ideas among participants.
We shared ideas on Climate change, Natural resource governance and public finance management, inclusion and exclusion, and also movement building.
“It opened our minds to realise that we have a lot to do in securing a living in the face of climate change, and also to cub and minimise activities that alter climate change,” he said.
Makore said some of the projects discussed as part of possible climate proofing included tree planting, gardening, conservative agriculture, use of ‘tsotso’ stoves, desisting from stream bank cultivation, small livestock production, among many others.
Also learnt during the Festival was the need for citizens to do resource mapping programs of available local resources and tracking or managing them, Makore added.
Central Region ZIMCODD Coordinator, Gracia Mashingaidze said the Ideas Festival will see participants cascading down their gained knowledge to more members from their respective areas.
“The trained SEJAs will go back to their areas of operation targeting to train 500 women and youth leveraging on snowballing and idea harvesting technique.
“We intend to reach approximately 1,500 women and youth,” she said.
The ideas festival ran under the theme ‘Harnessing Youth Power for Social and
Economic Justice’.
The programme also seeks to deliberate on the prevailing circumstances and dynamics that undermine women and youth empowerment in the different ZIMCODD operating regions, the organisation says.
Women and youth voices have for long been neglected in policy networks and general communities; a situation worsened by unfair economic trade practices.
ZIMCODD says as many youths and women are in the informal sector, especially smallholder famers and artisanal
small-scale miners, they have been relegated to the periphery of the country’s value chain.
Other key concerns partly raised include the need for social and economic justice for cotton small holder farmers, who at one point were paid in groceries for their produce.
Other concerns included tobacco smallholder farmers being paid meagre allowances, the exclusion of women and youth in economic governance, unsustainable mining activities in communities, unresponsive budgeting processes at both local and national level.
Mashingaidze said to this end “the ideas festival seeks to build an informed movement of women and youths.”
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