Swedish Officials Visit Youth Centre

Swedish officials from Höör visited the Lüderitz Youth Centre on Tuesday the 18th November, to discuss ways in which Höör and Lüderitz can help each other.

The meeting got off to a slow start as, due to delays, it begins half an hour late. The room was filled with the excited Lüderitz youth. A lot of the youth present are part of the Lüderitz Town Council. Amongst the officials is the mayor of Höör.

The head of the Lüderitz Youth Centre, Mr Scholz, opened the meeting by introducing the Youth Centre staff and explaining the history. He explained that the Youth Centre building was originally occupied by the German school and was built in 1963. In 2005 the Youth Centre officially started working in the building and since then it has been through a number of changes coming with the as the Centre has grown.

After Mr Scholz has spoken the Mayor of Lüderitz, Mrs. Amupewa, explained the reason for the group of officials decision to visit Lüderitz. She explained that she has visited Höör last month in an attempt to connect the Höör community to Lüderitz. The goal is to exchange knowledge and ways of entertaining and educating the youth. The Mayor of Höör then continued the meeting with a brief introduction of Sweden and Scandinavia as a whole. And than we come to the main part of the meeting. It’s time for the youth to ask questions, as after all the goal is to help them, and to do so the delegation needs to know what their problems are.

“What involvement do you want to have?”

We want to investigate what is going on with the youth, what their problems or questions are. And eventually we want to find an answer to other mutual questions. Christol Ulson (sports & leisure official):

“What can we offer that would interest the youth to do something productive? On their own with just a little bit of help from the grown-ups to get them started.”

The community in Höör is also very interested in helping Lüderitz to set up a good functioning social security network. They will also look at the current Lüderitz social security network and see where they can improve on it. The social security network they envision for Lüderitz should be a nongovernmental one, with the families in the centre. I asked the delegation to break down their points in to a simple summary in order to get a clear picture of what the delegation is here for. I discovered that they are here to address 3 main areas:

• Improving life for early childhood

• Creating meaningful leisure activities & explaining how to develop these to the local community.

• Helping in setting up a modern water & sewage plant.

The main advantage of these plants is that natural gasses can be extracted from the sewage and used for electricity or to heat houses during the winter. They cannot guarantee to address all of these points, but these are the points they will focus on for the duration of their visit. The meeting closed with the question

“What does the youth of Lüderitz want or need for leisure?”

Better music facilities, so the youth can develop there artistic skills. Different kinds of dance lessons, not just African dance, but also R&B etc. And one that note the meeting ended with the promise to go on with the discussion the next day.