By Philippe Talavera | Director
As you know, the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation (OYO) is a Namibian NGO that uses Arts to create social awareness. The last few weeks have been very challenging for us.
95% of our budget comes from donors and partners. Most of our grants are for 10 to 12 months. Most grants end in December. The beginning of the year – and therefore transition to a new cycle - is always challenging. This year, we were lucky to start with three grants (two signed and one to be signed 31st January).
Unfortunately, while we don’t have direct funding from USAID, two of the grants were with Institutions/ Foundations that receive USAID money. That made us a sub-sub recipient. And with one of the first executive orders signed by Trump, those grants came to a standstill overnight. They represented 60% of our budget. This puts us in an extremely difficult situation.
While we will do all we can to avoid retrenching staff and keep OYO opened while waiting for the outcome of various proposals we had submitted towards year end, we obviously cannot do it alone. More than ever, we need your support. Please do reach out to friends and family and ask them to support us. Every USD10, Euro 10, GBP10 will go a long way helping us.
Meanwhile, we will push through to implement the one project we have left, thanks to Horizon Trust, and work with youth groups in the ||Kharas region.
Civil society’s voice is more than ever important. There’s more and more division in the world. We need to speak about humanity again – we need learn tolerance again – we need to look back at history and not repeat the same mistakes again.
Our link are still: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/using-arts-educate-4000-namibian-teenagers-on-hiv
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/help-oyo-buy-a-new-car
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:
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