2012-2021: #NiceToMeetEU: Chemwi Mutiwanyuka, Zimbabwe

Next year (2022) will mark ten years since I took part in the EU Visitors program. This, on the face of it, represented a very good learning and networking opportunity. However, the subtlety and emotional intelligence required to be able to successfully 'network' your way into achieving the things you want is a very fine art which not everyone masters. As such, I will say that the EUVP experience for me did not result yet in friendships or connections. I did however learn a lot of very seemingly unimportant but to me very interesting things.

One of these things is the translation system used in the European Parliament plenary sessions. Everything said on the floor is translated into each language spoken by the Members of the European Parliament coming from 27 EU countries. I found this to be a wonderful reflection of at least some kind of acknowledgement of the importance of all languages, regardless of how widely they are spoken, and yes, I do see the irony of my writing this message in English. I was also very impressed by the different organs of the European Union with departments for things like education and culture. 

I have stayed abreast of EU emails and news over the years and I am at the moment studying towards a PhD in Educational Sciences in Germany and would like to connect with like minded people through this platform more and make up for the ten years that I was not able to do so. For this, I turn to technology. 

I'm interested in conversing with people who have an interest in Education-African and otherwise, Education Financing, Social Entrepreneurship, Aid efficiency, Development and culture. My big questions are around the unsustainability of Education Aid to Africa and how we can address this, if at all. 

Using the Stereo app https://stereo.com/en people anywhere in the world can hold a conversation and then stream it live. Participants can join in the conversation and ask questions or just give comments in real time. If anyone is interested in taking part in such a conversation with me and or anyone else, please contact me. I'd love to hear from you and we can hopefully arrange something. I speak Shona and English and broken German.

In other but related matters, I am right now working out the methodology for my study. I would love to build in an action component but this requires resources. If there are any venture investors on the platform who are interested in experimenting with Education Financing, please also contact me, even if just to talk. Looking forward to being inundated with messages. Cheers

Story published by: Chemwi MUTIWANYUKA