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.

After difficult months, especially from May to August 2022, we were relieved to have lots of activities between September and December. We were delighted to learn that our project ‘Gentlemen and Supergirl phase II’ was approved by the Embassy of Finland and is allowing us to expand activities to the Oshana region in 2023 – our dance troupe educated over 4,000 learners in the region, and weekend camps were organized for girls and boys in February. We were also delighted to learn that our project ‘Growing strong in the ||Kharas region’ will continue in 2023 thanks to Horizon Trust. We worked with the Noordoewer Youth Group that recently toured the region. Thanks to additional support from De Beers, we could also implement a smaller version of the ‘Gentlemen and Supergirls’ project in the Hardap region, a region we had not been able to visit since 2018. Almost 4,300 people were reached by the dance troupe in March.

We are also starting this hear an ambitious project ‘looking through the lenses of street children’ thanks to the German Embassy and a small project ‘Hear me’ with Deaf children in Windhoek thanks to the Embassy of Bulgaria.

So, all in all 2023 seems to be off to a good start. We still experience problems securing enough funding for salaries and overheads, and we are facing a transport crisis as all our four cars are getting old and have driven each between 200,000 and 400,000km. However, we remain optimistic as we hope to secure more funding.

2023 is an important year for us, as it marks 20 years of OYO. We will have different activities through the year to celebrate our anniversary. In February 2023, we appointed our First ever Patron. Hon. Yvonne Dausab, Minister of Justice, agreed to be our first patron and lend us her support. In April 2023, we are embarking on a dance fundraising challenge. We want to dance for 20 hours to celebrate 20 years of OYO. We are inviting institutions, companies and friends of OYO to sponsor each one of the 20 hours. We hope this initiative will help us generate some much-needed funding.

Despite all those achievements, we still find it difficult to make month end meets. We have a very limited cashflow. We therefore count on you to spread the word and help us raise much needed funding for OYO. We know how difficult the last two years have been for you all – so your generosity and support are not going unnoticed. THANK YOU.

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.

Links:

• OYO facebook