Welcome to Zambia!
As part of the 2018 youth exchange with Livingstone, Zambia, the DACHSER Young Professionals learned a lot about the country, its people, and its culture—and about the widespread problem of waste management.
Logistics brings people, markets, and manufacturing closer together. For DACHSER, global growth also means taking global responsibility and fighting to improve the living conditions of those who have not benefited from globalization to the same extent. That is why DACHSER, together with the terre des hommes aid organization, has been active on behalf of children and young adults since 2005.
Visit to Zambia
To turn young people at the company into multipliers for this collaboration, DACHSER and terre des hommes launched a youth exchange project in 2017. That same year, a youth group was introduced to the DACHSER projects in northern India, followed this year by twelve DACHSER Young Professionals who went to Livingstone, a small city in the southern province of Zambia.
Lasting almost four weeks, the visit to Zambia was undoubtedly the highlight of the youth exchange, but as the program is scheduled to run for over two years, its objective is more wide ranging. Made up of DACHSER employees and also students from the terre des hommes network, the project group focused primarily on Sustainable Cities and communities, one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The group is working with young people from Zambia to develop a series of projects that help achieve this goal, and the visit served as the kickoff for these activities.
The young people gained profound insights into their work and projects aimed at improving living conditions in Zambia, especially the efforts of the Environment Africa organization, a local partner of terre des hommes. Given the absence of waste management, ground sometimes poisoned by lead, and the sporadic supply of clean water, such efforts often seem like a mere drop in the ocean. As is well known, however, this can also help to achieve long-term success. One thing is for sure: the visit strengthened the participants’ resolve to make their local projects count.
Intercultural exchange
In addition to many informative talks by local organizations, such as Environment Africa, the program included an intercultural exchange component. Participants got right into fashioning hobbyhorses out of sticks, socks, and foam rubber, then singing as they rode them around the room. The purpose? To re-enact the Osnabrück freedom ride, an annual event to commemorate the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
