Educate 20000 Namibian teenagers on HIV using Arts

As you know, the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation (OYO) is a Namibian NGO that uses Arts to create social awareness. The period June to August has been extremely difficult. Namibia has been hit by a very dramatic third COVID19 wave. To date, it has been the wave with the highest number of cases and fatalities. Schools closed again, public gatherings were limited again to 10 people and regional borders were closed. All OYO’s project had to come to a standstill.

Thanks to our trusted partner Stichting Horizon we could produce exciting educational clips with the OYO dance troupes on ‘don’t fall pregnant during the winter school break’, ‘COVID19 is no excuses for GBV’ and ‘take care of mental health’. The clips were used on social media and our local channel NBC.  

During that period, we negotiated a new grant with the Embassy of Finland for a project in schools in the Omusati and Ohangwana region (September 2020 to August 2021) and a research project with ALIGN.

During that period, we took part in the GlobalGiving littlexlittle challenge and we would like to take this chance to thank everybody for your support. We received several donations and they couldn’t have been timelier. Your support helped us go through this difficult period. Thanks to this support, we could keep on rehearsing with the dance troupe, despite the fact we couldn’t perform. As soon as regulations relaxed, we could perform to a girl’s camp organized in the South and perform during a function organized by the Ministry of Health and Social Services.

During that period, we couldn’t reach much people face-to-face: however, we could reach people on social media and broadcasting. We produced 13 clips and each clip was seen on social media by an average of 883 people (each was seen between 361 and 1,905 people).

At the end of September, once the country had opened again, OYO organised a Kharas Youth Performing Arts Festivals. It gathered together groups from Noordoewer, Koes, Karasburg and Keetmanshoop and the dance troupe. The 50 youth people had a chance to work together, learn from one another and perform together. It was an extraordinary experience. 

We are most thankful to everybody who helped us during that period – either through donations or by sharing our call for donation and promoting our organization. In the coming months we will continue asking you to help us reach our goals by encouraging friends and colleagues to support us.   

Our link is still: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/using-arts-educate-4000-namibian-teenagers-on-hiv

If you have any friends who may be able to support us please do share the link. We greatly appreciate all the support we can get, no matter how big or small.