Organizations

Omaheke San Trust News 

2010-07-19 09:59:27

OST Board
Since the election of its new board in December, the board itself has added four new members. Firstly two professionals, John Naodoes (Teacher) and Daniel Xashe (Accounting Assistant), joined the board in March. In May they were followed by two further members to replace the departure of Willem Abuse and Paulus Jakobs to take up positions within the Trust, and these were Alfons Jors and Ita Kambase. Daniel replaces Willem as Chair, with Alfons as Deputy and John as Treasurer. We wish the new board well in their roles!

Education
The OST education program has continued to progress well, with the addition of two further scholarships being made available by a private donor. One of our existing scholarship awardees, Dina Lukas, impressed the recent Raleigh International visitors so much with her spirit to succeed that they also donated money towards the OST scholarship program.

To help OST to better understand the problems facing San students, OST hosted three postgraduate students from Sheffield University for six weeks in May to June to complete their theses on san issues. One of the students, Louise Newbould, focused specifically on barriers to educational success. The research highlights have already been forwarded to both Unicef and the Minister for Education with the hope that positive actions can be taken to address some of the issues identified.

OST contributed generally to the recent UNICEF report on the position of the child in Namibia to ensure that San issues continue to be acknowledged on the national agenda.

Community Mobilizers
The OST mobilizers met again in June to discuss education and government policies on education for marginalized groups, with the help of Lesle Jansen from the Legal Assistance Centre, and stakeholders from the ministries of education and gender/child welfare. Over three days the 10 mobilizers from around Omaheke were informed about and able to debate educational issues as well as reconnect with one another and share knowledge on other topics such as labour, criminal cases and gender violence.

Feedback from the mobilizers has been extremely positive and OST hopes to be able to continue with the LAC
facilitated workshops in the future. Mobiliser workshop at Tjaka Ben Hur - June

Crafts & Culture
Our Guesthouse reconstruction work has now been completed, leaving us with the task of refurbishing the interior to reflect the San culture of the region. We hope to incorporate drawings from local San artisans into the furnishings and décor to promote their work and give an insight into the lives of the San communities.

The crafts trainings are in their final stages now, with prototypes produced and in the process of review by potential wholesale buyers in Namibia. We look forward to the arrival of Josie Gordon, our new Crafts & Culture Marketing volunteer, in August. Josie will be joined by her counterpart, Paulus Jakob, to carry forward the Omaheke Crafts project.

OST now falls under the umbrella of the Community Enterprise Support Program (CESP), an initiative between VSO and NACSO. This means that OST will enjoy further support from VSO, including access to further funding, marketing tools and an enterprise support assistant.

New People!
The office team has changed once again, following the loss of Gerhard to his Windhoek relocation. We now welcome Denitia Boshoff our new Finance & Administration Manager who is proving to be a great asset. Yasmin also left due to personal issues and will be replaced in August by Josie Gordon. Our three UK students were with us from May to June, helping out in the office as well as completing research studies. Kerry spent her time looking at the position of San farm workers, Jonathan investigated the impact of
HIV on San communities whilst, Louise considered barriers to educational success. All three studies will be integrated into OST action planning by the Board.

Other News
OST facilitated the visit of a project team from Raleigh International to the Donkerbos community in May to build a playground for the isolated community over five days. The visit seemed to have a profound impact on both the Raleigh team and the community and the pictures from the opening ceremony speak for themselves
about the enjoyment that this project brought to the children and adults of Donkerbos community.

Contacts: Besa/Kathryn @ OST on: 062 564073 or WIMSA on: 061 272911

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