Youth Exchange South to South – Tanzania Girl Guides Association

YESS Programme

The YESS Girls Movement is a WAGGGS (World Association for Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) international exchange opportunity that gives a platform to young women age 18-25 and 26-35 years for professional volunteers to explore their leadership potentials in their home countries and host countries.

The young women leave their home countries to go to another country where they stay for six months. During this period, they are assigned leadership responsibilities by their host Girl Guiding Associations. They are given the platform to share their guiding experiences from their home countries with their host countries. When they return to their countries, they have two full months for follow-up work during which they share their experiences from their host countries. This Movement started in 2015 until now we are delighted to announce that it brought a great impact to Girls all over the world.

This exchange wouldn’t have been possible without the aid from NOREC (Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation) who sponsors the movement at a large percent and WAGGGS also. We as future leaders are truly grateful for all they have done and different thoughts of doing to improve this exchange for the betterment of women. The countries involved in this exchange are Tanzania, Kenya Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Nepal, Madagascar, Zambia, Senegal, and Nigeria. The YESS Girl Movement started in 2016 in Tanzania, hence Tanzania Girl Guides Association (TGGA) was privileged to send and receive participants since then to date. Below is the chain of the participants sent and received by TGGA from 2016

For the period of seven years (From 2016- to 2023) TGGA has been able to send nineteen (19) girls from different countries such as Madagascar, Rwanda, Nepal, Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Zambia. TGGA was privileged to host twenty-two (22) young women.

Despite the fact that the exchange programme has sharpened the leadership skills for the young women in our association, but TGGA has been able to grow in membership from the total of 5,675 in 2016 to 60,088 in 2023.

TGGA has been able to undertake different activities which help in addressing different challenges affecting girls and women in our country such as Menstrual Hygiene issues; the program has helped in raising awareness different schools, training on how to make reusable pads, and the myths associated with the menstrual hygiene in our country. TGGA has been working closely with other partners and MHM coalition in advocating on the removal of VAT on the sanitary towels. TGGA have been able to raise awareness on Gender Based Violence issues, Climate change issues and leadership.