About Us

Amava Oluntu (South Africa) and Starkmacher (Germany) are nonprofit-organisations that both share a great passion and vision for sustainable development and youth empowerment. By exchanging educational practices and collaborating collectively, they can expand their way of working and foster intercultural dialogue across borders. Together, the partners promote sustainable living and Global Learning through shared projects that connect individual realities within the social, economic and private sphere with global systems. They contribute to more just futures by opening up opportunities for learning, capacity building and widening more inclusive networks and sharing know-how.

The partnership promotes local sustainable development in the sense of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by implementing its principles in a practical manner - acting local while thinking global. The partnership embodies local participation whilst looking through the global lens.

Climate protection, poverty reduction, peace – youth are facing great challenges and need to learn how to develop sustainable solutions. This requires systems competence as each concern is linked to ecological, social and economic systems. Systems thinking and experiential learning across borders therefore play an important role in our activities.

The Partnership

"The youth of today is the future of tomorrow."

Inspire

young people to become multipliers of change within their communities and in a global context.

Engage

in a potential-oriented learning process shaped by diversity, equivalence and exchange.

strengthen

yourself, each other and your community by focusing on your potential.

Impact

sustainable development in the community by becoming an agent of change and a leader of progress.

OUR OBJECTIVES

to implement joint projects that promote sustainable living through Global Learning
to establish a platform that enables the exchange of methodologies, perspectives and stories
to promote the SDGs through sharing techniques and principles of sustainable development
to network and cooperate with like-minded partners in the German-South African landscape
to raise awareness on asset-based (not needs-based) developments and to contribute to solutions for social issues, such as racism, poverty or lack of education
to actively promote opportunities for exchanges, education and training between Germany and South Africa

→ to implement the principles and practice of global sustainability on a local level!

The Partners

Amava Oluntu is an IsiXhosa expression that means “social experience”. Amava Oluntu is a South African non-profit organisation, aiming at connecting people with each other and creating learning spaces that encourage reconnection of individuals to themselves, others and the natural world. As South Africa has a high drop out rate from school, the organisation specialises in empowering the local youth and giving them opportunity to develop the ability to explore new ways of thinking and broaden their horizon. The organisation allows young people to collaborate and work together in order to be able to develop a perspective for themselves. In their projects they work a lot with the art of expressing oneself, aiming for inspired individuals and strong communities for a sustainable togetherness.

Amava Oluntu is great in local networking and community work and adds important perspectives on current and relevant social issues to the partnership.

Find out more

here.

Starkmacher is German, literally meaning “strong maker”. Starkmacher is a non-profit organisation, acting as a platform for youth educational projects in different sectors. The projects are all strength- and potential-oriented with the focus on the individual. The organisation offers a platform for people who want to make a difference and stand up for solidarity and against discrimination and provides those people with the resources and networks to make change happen via motivated project work. In their projects they want to encourage young people to discover their own potential in order to become multipliers of change for a more sustainable and just world, orientated on the SDG framework.

The organisation brings a great international network and expertise in project work and funding possibilities into the young partnership.