Keep solidarity among youth during post electoral insecurity

[Eric UWINTWAZA]

As you may have read this in the annual Constellation's report, Burundi Competence tries to keep solidarity among youth. Volunteers young and old, we are united in our differences in age, sex, political opinion, religion,... We decided that despite fears due to the day by day deterioration of the security and economic climate, we should act upon our vulnerabilities in solidarity. When certainly most of our compatriots feel overwhelmed, we feel that it is not the time to give up but to continue to act, therefore to live.

Hence, we win small but real victories that strengthen our belief that we could do better. At first, we thought of a broad campaign with a lot of SALT, but we had to scale back our ambitions because of the context of fear escalated in a context of armed conflict.

At least some young people who initially viewed their peers as enemies have joined us and we discovered together a common humanity in small gestures of solidarity: visits of neighbourhood deemed inaccessible by some, blood donation, follow up of joint training, sharing of hot meals, etc.

We built a foundation for the development of a more consistent and well thought SALT program by putting together our strengths. Indeed, we have planned a workshop to develop a common dream and sit a community competence facilitation program, not to mention the competence of community of volunteers themselves.