The cities of Tampere
and Mwanza have joint their efforts under the North-South Local Government
Cooperation Programme since the beginning, 2002. Yet the history of cooperation
goes back to 1988, when Tampere and Mwanza became twin cities. The co-operation
programme is coordinated by the Association of Finnish Regional and Local
Authorities (AFLRA) and funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. In
Mwanza the co-operation is in line with the city strategy and in Tampere it
supports the Aalborg commitments.
Since 2002 the focus
of the Tampere-Mwanza cooperation has been on capacity building of the city
administration through training, exchanging of ideas and knowhow and
colleague-to-colleague partnership. During the past 10 years the cooperation
has included: school sector, environmental sector, fire service, local
democracy and city councils.
Results and impacts of co-operation
Mwanza City view, picture Saara Pakaslahti |
School cooperation has developed teaching methodologies, such as learning-by-doing, child-cantered-approach, peer work and other participatory methods in class situations. Teaching methods have gradually been taken into practice in the 5 project schools in Mwanza. Teachers in both cities have noted that the exchange visits are very motivating and that they have become better teachers because of the cooperation. The 5 project schools in Mwanza are now higher in national school ranking in Tanzania than before the cooperation started.
Composting posters for awareness raising, picture Saara Pakaslahti |
City Councillor trainings have had an important impact especially to newly elected councillors. The trainings have given a chance for councillors to share ideas, exchange views, and learn new topics and good governance practices. It also helped strengthen the councillor’s work in the City Council. Training arranged to Ward and Mtaa Executive Officers have helped them in conducting activities and supervising the Ward development projects. In the long run these positive impacts will lead to the development of several Ward projects and will result to development of Mwanza City as a whole.
In Tampere the cooperation has increased horizontal cooperation between different departments and also between the civil servants and the city councillors. Also, the way of organizing local level citizen participation in Mwanza has affected the development of organizing citizen participation models in Tampere. The project has given international opportunities and experiences for instance to firemen, who until now have had few opportunities to increase their international experience. Also schools and teachers have gained international experience, which is reintegrated into the educational content of lessons as global education. In Tampere school co-operation has a direct link in global education activities at schools which is bound to broaden the understanding of pupils and increase tolerance. Residents of Tampere have had many opportunities in learning about the Tanzanian culture through music and workshops and meet people from Mwanza when they have been visiting Tampere on various occasions.
New project period 2013-2014
New funding period for the North-South Local Government Programme has been opened for 2013-2014 and the application for the continuation of the Tampere-Mwanza project has been submitted. Hopefully the co-operation will be granted another opportunity to successfully implement project activities. In the new project term the project will focus on the following objectives:
- To improve service delivery and good governance by capacity building of municipal authorities and personnel
- To create employment and reduce poverty by new models for business development and financial management
- To increase sustainability and participation in communities by raising awareness on living environment and its management.
To meet these
objectives, a variety of activities will be implemented both in Mwanza and
Tampere. Training and exchange visits of different city officials continue to
be in the core of the activities. Environmental management especially through
school composting programme and awareness raising is an important part of the
project in Mwanza.Training and creating new possibilities for small-scale entrepreneurs
in Mwanza are new activities. The aim is to create linkages in the business
context between Mwanza and Tampere.
Strong co-operation
10-year anniversary booklet, picture Aino Myllyluoma |
Project Manager
Ruusa Gawaza
City of Tampere
No comments:
Post a Comment