There’s nothing quite like being on the ground when everything comes together.
Recently, a team of five from Flow Communications packed up and headed to Dar es Salaam for the u’GOOD Annual Conference 2025 – a four-day gathering that brought together researchers, funders and young leaders from across the Global South to spotlight efforts to advance youth well-being.
There were late nights, sweaty mornings, chipped nails, 3 000 brochures to print and a million shillings in cash that had to be carried across town. But we did it.
u’GOOD is a five-year research partnership between South Africa’s National Research Foundation and Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and Fondation Botnar of Switzerland. It’s all about understanding relational well-being among the youth of the Global South – how the connections between people, their communities and their environments shape how they live and thrive.
The conference was the first large-scale, Global South-led effort to shape the conversation on youth well-being. And Flow was proud to be right in the thick of it – running communications, social media and photography, and helping ensure the event ran smoothly.
Before the delegates even arrived, we were knee-deep in conference prep. There were bags to pack, folders to stuff, files to sort and a mountain of printed material to pull together.
At one point, we realised we needed thousands of pages printed immediately for the welcome packs. Cue our managing director, Tiffany Turkington, and senior communications specialist Thrishni Subramoney trekking through backstreets in search of a printer, cash in hand – one million Tanzanian shillings, to be exact. Dicey? Definitely. Brave? Absolutely. Worth it? 100%. They came back with everything we needed, and somehow, we all survived to tell the tale.
The work that mattered
Between the logistics and the laughs, there was serious work happening. We helped shape daily communications, drafted press releases, live-posted sessions, profiled researchers and youth leaders, and supported the production of a documentary capturing the heart of the u’GOOD programme.
It was powerful to witness. The conversations were grounded and raw. As Professor Sharlene Swartz from the HSRC said: “For far too long, the Global North has been talking about us instead of with us.”
That line stuck with us. It summed up what this conference was really about – shifting the centre of gravity for youth research to where most of the world’s young people actually live: Africa and Asia.
We came as partners, left as family.
By the final day, something had shifted – not just in the programme, but in us. We’d worked hard, laughed harder and somehow pulled off what felt impossible a few times along the way.
We left Dar es Salaam tired but inspired, proud to have played our part in helping u’GOOD tell its story. We showed up, we showed out and we did it together.
That’s the Flow way.
