Voices of the Youth

  Ms Angela Damas, United Republic of Tanzania

Angela Damas, the female youth delegate representing Tanzania at the UN Global Youth Leadership Summit, discusses the malaria situation in her country.

Ms. Damas, who obtained a Bachelor’s degree in sociology last year, has been working with the United Nations Association of Tanzania since 1998 and has managed two large projects there, one relating to globalization and another on the MDGs. She has taken British Council leadership training and is now involved in implementing that programme. As Miss Tanzania 2002, she became involved in countrywide volunteer work and is currently a member of the Youth Advisory Board of a Youth Involvement and Participation (YIP) programme on youth health under the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). This work has enabled her to organize projects at the grassroots level, while her work with corporations has allowed her to become familiar with private sector issues.

I live in Dar es Salaam where I work with a number of youth initiatives. Young people's voices are not always heard when it comes to improving the future of our country and our planet. Sometimes this is because the youth themselves have not been given the tools or training to articulate their needs and concerns. In secondary school I started working on environmental advocacy and this opened my eyes to a whole new world so that later I became very interested in the work of the United Nations and how I could become involved. Awareness raising sessions are now a key part of the work that I and others carry out. We try to expand communities' vision of the world and their place in it. For instance, what globalization is and how globalization affects one's day-to-day life. From there, we empower communities to be active in local and national decision-making processes. There are solutions and there is wisdom at the local, community level, but people do not always tap into these elements.

In the communities where I have worked, malaria is prevalent. However, it is rarely raised as a main problem except in areas where mothers have recently lost their children to malaria - in these areas, motivation to learn more about malaria and how to prevent and treat it is very high. I feel that communities do not raise the issue of malaria because it is seen as a part of daily life that not much can be done about. Malaria control information and tools are not available in many places or they are not affordable. The government and others are working to change this and communities should be centrally involved.

[Editor's note: the Government of Tanzania estimates that 28 million of Tanzania’s 34 million citizens are exposed to the risk of malaria. With approximately 100,000 deaths per year attributed to malaria, the disease is more destructive than AIDS or any other single cause.]

HIV/AIDS scares people more and we have found that most of the small organizations we work with focus on malaria only partially because HIV/AIDS overshadows. Of course, there should not be a competition between raising awareness on one or the other disease. But, there does need to be a better balance. There are so many practical things that can be done to prevent malaria. Given the right information, opportunities and resources people will readily and enthusiastically become involved in the fight against malaria.

At the Youth Summit, I look forward to sharing experiences and discussing priorities with young leaders coming from different places. We will dialogue, share best practices and learn from one another. I hope to be given some concrete tools to stay connected and continue networking after the Summit in order to enrich the work we all do at home.