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 last four months have been very productive at OYO.

While the end of 2023 was difficult, 2024 is off to a better start. Our main achievement at the beginning of the year was to recruit two youth counselor interns. We now have a fulltime youth counsellor and two interns. This is allowing us to expand our services and reach more young people. The interns share their time in Windhoek, managing our counselling line and visiting local school while the youth counselor follows the different projects and provides on-the-spot counselling in the regions. We can now reach out more young people and provide much needed psycho-social support. While it is too early to report on numbers reached, we can confidently say that we have, at the beginning of 2024, reached more young people.

Last time, we reported about our ambitious project ‘looking through the lenses of street children’ thanks to the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. After interviewing 17 children living in the streets, and 4 juveniles who have lived in the streets prior to being in conflict with the law, we created a script and shot our film, ‘Lukas’. On 01^st February, we premiered the film to 250 people. Feedback received was extremely good: 'A story that could not leave any person untouched' (Felicity Philander), 'we have to get these conversations started. Excellent work' (Lize-Leandra Ann Ehlers), 'Lukas is a powerful, thought-provoking film and a must-see' (Mosalaesi Lucky Mosalale), 'the film is true to life' (Rachel Coomer), 'incredible performances, incredible film' (Sandy Rudd). Since, the movie was selected by Ster Kinekor to screen both in Namibia and in South Africa, making it the first Namibian movie to have a run-in cinemas in South Africa! A review (in Afrikaans) from South Africa can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPR5U3hCE4U. Thanks to the film, OYO initiated discussions on the issue of children living and working on the streets with the UN, the city of Windhoek and various other stakeholders.

The dance troupe has toured the ||Kharas region, addressing issues of teenage pregnancy and drug abuse, thanks to Horizon Trust. It has then toured the Kunene region, addressing issues of gender-based violence, thanks to the Embassy of the Republic of Finland. It reached 3920 people in the ||Kharas region and 6485 in the Kunene region. It also performed in Katutura (Windhoek) during campaigns to promote HIV testing and PrEP. With over 10,000 people reached in the first two months of 2024, we can be proud of our achievements.

We also organised two camps – one of 55 girls and one for 55 boys – in the Oshana region to continue train our gentlemen and supergirls. During the weekend, participants received in-depth training and committed to revive their school clubs for 2024. Two more camps for girls and boys in the Kunene region are scheduled for 20-22 March.

Despite all those achievements, we haven’t sorted out our transport problem – so we opened another page to help us fundraise for transport too. Salaries and overheads remain a difficulty to secure – especially in a time when the price for most commodities increased. We really thank wholeheartedly those of you who are still supporting us. We know times are difficult, and there’s many projects crying for help all over the world. We therefore value your support tremendously.

 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:

• OYO official website
• OYO facebook