Mungongi Foundation

My name is Mungongi Stephan from Namibia.I am a 33 year old agripreneur and humanitarian from Namibia. I am the founder and Managing Director of the Mungongi Agriculture Project which is an agriculture production company and i am also the founder and Director of the Mungongi Foundation,a non profit organization.

I started the Mungongi foundation 10 years ago with one goal in mind,to help fight against the spread of HIV AIDS at the grassroots level in poor rural Namibia.The foundation uses a unique tool which is sports in carrying out its tasks confronting HIV AIDS and other social ills such as alcohol and substance abuse.

I lost my mother to HIV AIDS and it is against this background that my foundation advocates to support HIV AIDS orphans in rural Namibia by mobilizing corporate and government support for them most especially in rural Namibia that is hit by abject poverty.

Namibia has more than 200 000 people living with HIV AIDS and the country's national prevalence rate stands at 14%. About 4500 people get infected with this disease on an annual basis hence HIV AIDS is the leading cause of death in Namibia.

The region were i operate my foundation from is the Kavango region and it is the third highest region in the country in terms of HIV AIDS infections.The problem i am trying to solve is the rapid and robust spread of HIV AIDS in rural regions of the country where there is no adequate awareness and resources that people need in order to be safe.

I want my foundation to not only do our work nationwide but we also want a presence in the entire SADC region and this will save many people's lives and help orphans lead a better life,most especially poor people in rural settings.

Today there is 38 million people living with HIV AIDS in the world and in my country Namibia there are more than 200 000 people living with this disease.My community has the third highest rate of HIV AIDS in the country and that is a serious cause for concern.

The initial problem here is that these are very poor communities and as a result there is high numbers of unemployment which means so many young people from the ages of 15-35 are sitting at home idled with nothing productive to do and this leads them into alcohol and substance abuse which then goes on to unprotected sexual intercourse and at the end of the day the virus spreads rapidly and more able bodies youths are then lost to this disease leaving children behind as orphans.

As part of my project i use sports as bait to bring these young people together through soccer and netball competitions and then use the platform to drive home the message of HIV AIDS awareness,encourage them to go for testing and to practice safe sex and stop alcohol and substance abuse via information sharing sessions that happen at the sports field on game day.

I have been sponsoring soccer and netball competitions for the rural youths.Through this sponsorship,which is my way of giving back to the community,i donate soccer and netball balls,trophies and medals then the youths who have created soccer and netball teams compete for these prizes.

These participants are unemployed youths and have nothing to do so to keep them away from alcohol and substance abuse they participate in the league.The games are played from March till October and they play every weekend on Saturdays and Sundays.

We use the Fridays for our information sharing sessions and this has a reach of 360 boys aged 15-36 and 112 ladies aged 20-32.During the information sharing sessions my committee and i use power point presentations to educate them about how to protect themselves.

After having noticed the fruits of this initiative,the ministry of health in Namibia has partnered up with my foundation as an implementing partner for their AIDS programs and they do the testing and voluntary male circumcision of the participants in their mobile vans at the sports field.

We also donate menstrual pads to the orphaned girls who participate in the league and identify orphans whom we can help place into orphanages.

The people i am working to directly impact are people who live in abject poverty and well bellow the breadline making 1dollar a day.Because of these they are surrounded by high unemployment,alcohol and substance abuse,crime and off course disease.

I was born in these same communities and i grew up right in the center of it all so i understand first hand all the dynamics involved.

As i develop this project i have engaged them in many ways to be an integral part of this project where they not only wait to be beneficial of this project but also advocates of the foundation and its entire system.

Where they themselves after having experienced the good that i have been doing through my organization,they themselves can also go out and empower others.Their response has been overwhelming and very warm in this regard,we now have more than 60 volunteers who have signed up to advocate for this foundation and help spread HIV AIDS awareness in poor rural communities

My project is working to raise HIV AIDS awareness,drive action and provide solutions on a day to day basis against a very big problem that my community and the entire world is facing.

We are doing this by being a vehicle of social good in terms of championing community change and we have a very good track record in this regard so i firmly believe that we are well aligned to the selected dimension of elevating issues and their projects by building awareness and driving action to solve the most difficult problems of our world because of our work.

I lost my mother to HIV AIDS in 2008 and this was also the year that i was in my second year at the University of Namibia,i officially became an orphan.

After losing my mother i did not have any support and life was very difficult for me,i had to end my studies because of financial constraints and had to go back home because i had no one who could pay for my tuition fees so i decided to go back home and start an agriculture business since i had land in order to try and make ends meet.

The agriculture became a success and the following year i felt the need to start an organization that will confront HIV AIDS head because of what it had done to me and so many other people around me,and so the Mungongi Foundation was born.

The organization has been in existence since 2009 when i started i only had one of my cousins as the other member who helped me run it but it has since grown from strength to strength to become one of the most recognized NGOs in the country with more than 400 beneficiaries.

I was born in this part of the world were i am operating my foundation from,in the Kavango region.I grew up here swimming in the kavango river with my friends since the 7th age and when i stopped my tertiary education i came back home to the village to start a horticulture project.

The success of this project meant i was now in a position to give back to my community that gave me so many years of fond memories from swimming in the river,to bull ridding,tree climbing and all the great childhood memories that were created here,i developed great love for my community across the years despite the fact that we are surrounded by abject poverty.

On top of that when i lost my mother it was only natural to integrate the issue of HIV AIDS in my giving back to the community incentive.So that is why till today i am naturally driven by a culmination of all these factors,the strong bond i have with my people who are also my customers and the loss i had to endure just makes me work harder to eradicate this disease in this part of the world.

We have been in existence for over a decade now and within that time i have accumulated vast experience on how to solve this problem and deliver the desired result.It has been a roller coaster but i have learned a very important skill set that i have been using and will continue to apply well into the foreseeable future.

Not only have i crafted myself into a well oiled machine that has serious concern for humanity but i have also managed to successfully drag so many people along and they have become part of the movement who now help us out as volunteers.

The experiences vastly lie from the day i lost my mother to when i was selected as a young African leader to represent my country at the Mandela Washington Fellowship program in 2018 in the United States which is the flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative which was started by former president of the United States Barrack Obama.

I was selected because of the humanitarian work i have been doing through my foundation and i was placed at an Ivy league institution,at Dartmouth college for 3 months during which i learned business and how to engage communities and help them solve complex problems through linked prosperity.

I learned so much from other young African leaders from what they do in their counties and this has equipped me with a brand new set of skills that i use to deliver the project and solve the problem

One of the biggest obstacles i went through that i successfully managed to turn into an opportunity was when i lost my mother and because she was the only one who took care of me i had to find a way to make ends meet for myself and also go a step further and help everyone else around me who might be faced by the same obstacles that i went through.

In the same vein there was a time we had to attend the world AIDS day event for the region and on that day two of my volunteers were also at the venue,they were drunk because they had been drinking alcohol the previous night into the morning.

Because they were not sober they started to disturb the peace at the event and this meant i had to step in and use my problem solving skills to lure them outside the community hall and escort them home.I was not aware of their condition since i was the master of ceremonies so in the middle of my speaking on stage i had to get off the stage and in a hilarious way joked about the incident and made the people laugh.

One day when the local combined school in my village was having their price giving event i was invited as main speaker and this was done because i have been donating to the school for a number of years.

The school management asked me to sit at the high table and enjoy the snacks and delicious delicacies that were going to be served during the event.When the serving started i stood up and asked to join the school girls serving team to serve everyone else,it shocked everyone who was present.

From invited guest and main speaker to being part of the service crew.During my speech i highlighted why i had joined to serving team and to this i mentioned that ,'the problem with leaders in our society today is that we want to be served and not to serve but we forget that leaders do not ask to be served,leaders put the interest of their communities before those of their own and lest they serve the masses'.

I got a huge standing ovation for this speech and from that day till today the school has changed its system on prize giving day,now all the teachers serve the learners during meals.