By Victor Angula|
Ohangwena Social Behaviour Change Makers (OSBCM) was born out of a UNICEF Social Behaviour Change Toolkit Workshop. From this initiative, a group of seven (7) young people came together to form OSBCM, with the mandate to disseminate the toolkit across the region and promote social behaviour change.
What was just an idea around a social behaviour and sexual reproductive toolkit, and the passion of seven individuals, in just over a year it has grown into a group of 12 committed vibrant young people who have started a civil society platform whose vision is “Advocating for young people to live with dignity”.
“This is a civil society organisation in Namibia that addresses youth and adolescent challenges relating to sexual reproductive health and gender equality,” said Ms Puye Penexupifo Hambelela Shonena, the chairperson and co-founder of OSBCM.
“Our aim is to partner and align with line ministries so that we can help the government reach communities. We want to harness positive social behaviour change in Namibia.”
The organisation was started in January 2025.
“As young people we realised that there are so many problems and challenges of a social behaviour nature in our communities, and we decided that we can be the solution to those problems.”
Ms Shonena said that the response of the community has been positive. With a small funding from UNICEF the organisation has been able to carry out some of its action plans, such as training peer educators in Ohangwena region.
“So far we have trained 24 peer educators from 12 schools in the region. We have trained 30 Life Skills teachers on how they can incorporate the UNICEF sexual reproductive health and social behaviour change toolkit into their lessons.
“And we have also reached 10 marginalised San communities with our community engagement, so that we can foster positive parenthood from home.
“We also reached 39 schools with our school outreach programme so that we can reach adolescents with topics such as HPV vaccines, topics such as puberty, topics such as healthy relationships and sex and other stuff.”
With the depletion of the initial funding, the OSBCM has looked on government ministries and agencies to come on board and put more wheels on this young civil society organisation operating from Eenhana.
“Since May we have been stagnant and have not really implemented anything because there isn’t any funding for that,” said Shonena.
“We want to reach so many communities, not only in Ohangwena, but also across Namibia, and so you need transportation for that, you need venues to train the Life Skills teachers and train the peer educators, we need transport to reach the schools and communities but without money we cannot be able to do anything.
“So far [funding] has been one of the challenges that we are facing.”
The youthful leader of the OSBCM called for organisations, private and public institutions, and individuals to lend a hand to the efforts aimed at addressing youth and adolescent challenges related to sexual reproductive health and gender equality.
“We are calling out to OMAs, organisations, ministries and agencies to please come on board and help Ohangwena Social Behaviour Change Makers reach many young people and many communities in Namibia so that together we can harness positive social behaviour change across Namibia.”
Other than money she said the organisation also needs such other support in kind as printing services, free media engagements, “we mostly deal with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, so even sanitary pads will be highly appreciated.”
“Our message to the youth of Ohangwena and Namibia is that, you know that change starts with you. If you want to see a change in your community, please be that change; if you are an individual please align yourself with other young people in the community, together you can be able to do so much, create so much impact and be the change that you really want to see in your community.”
Shonena emphasised that the aim is to create a space for young people who are in school and those who are out of school to be engaged in something positive for themselves and their communities.
“The OSBCM initiative was started by unemployed public health science graduates from Ohangwena region who have seen that there is a challenge and they have this knowledge they have gotten from the university and they started to create this platform.
“So any supporter out there, come on and help us so that we can amplify this platform to reach more people and create an opportunity for others.”
– In the photo: Puye Shonena (on the right), with Tresia Ndahafifwa Nashidengo, seen at the just-ended ICT Summit held in Ongwediva where OSBCM was an exhibitor.
