Annual Letter 2023: A Beacon of Hope in Simonga
- Nov 22, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: May 8
Dearest Friends, Family, and Supporters of Tonga Teen Corners,
Some of you will remember that just a year ago, Dominique Delor, Anne Thomasset, the French pharmacist on our team, and I set off for a month’s reconnaissance visit to Zambia, invited by our dear friends Charles and Emma Stewart, to visit the country they love and to explore possibilities for supporting the health and education of its youth.
We quickly learned that Zambia already has in place a remarkably efficient, decentralized system of health posts and centers, ably led by highly qualified teams of nurses, and dedicated to health promotion and prevention. Inspired by the country’s pro-democracy leader’s focus on youth—70% of the Zambian population is under 30—and the team of nurses and young peer ambassadors in the village of Simonga with whom we partnered, we devised with the District Health Office in the Southern Province and our partner NGO there, On Call Africa, a project that was just the right size and shape for us.
Over the course of last year we raised, with the help of many of you receiving this letter, the funds to build our first youth center and to fill it with appropriate furniture, teaching tools, games, computers, and other supportive materials—the better to create a space of confidentiality, comfort, and supportive peer community for Zambian adolescents in search of a better life.
We return to you today—and to our widening group of believers and supporters—to invite you to help us support our second adolescent-friendly space in rural Zimba, Zambia.
In August 2023, we returned to Zambia for the opening of our first teen corner (Youth Friendly Space as the Zambian government officially refers to them now), which has become the very first in the Southern Province to be built to the national health standards. Because adolescents need a completely separate space with its own entrance and access to trained peer counselors who will keep confidentiality, we worked with the Simonga nurses and with On Call Africa to ensure that ours would be a model of what the national health program envisioned: a future center of excellence that would be a template for others to come.
Our work—along with that of other generous donors to On Call Africa who renovated the maternity clinic and the reception and triage areas, who put in flush toilets and many other amenities—lifted Simonga from a medical post to a medical center. Our work there together will ensure that the valiant team of three nurses at Simonga will be strengthened by the arrival of three more medical professionals, and possibly even a doctor.
The high point of our month was not just the painting ceremony (captured above) at which our peer ambassadors first covered the walls of the structure with their trademark colors (blue and orange), but also our month-long conversations about values and leadership that preceded it. They are a group of young leaders ranging in age from 13 to 21 who want to offer alternatives to their peers other than early marriage and pregnancy, dropping out of school, turning to homemade, health-endangering drugs, and engaging in sexual behavior that would not lead to what they call with great passion “living a positive life.”
Working together, they came up with a list of the values that wanted to honor in their work in the space—respect for self and others; capacity-building; kindness and sharing; confidentiality; trust; self-control; cooperation and solidarity; living a positive life. These will be inscribed on one wall of the building.
One thing led to another and a few nights before the painting ceremony Kelvin came up with a drawing/logo you can see printed on the t-shirts worn by all in the photo above that included hands reaching out to help in the shape of a heart, the sun beaming down hope and healing light; and the motto tuyeyele antomwe, which means, let us put our knowledge together. For these young people, that slogan is an allusion to the power of science, medicine, the law, reason—all allies in the fight against some inherited ideas that keep girls out of school, heads in the sand, and negative behaviors in play.
How do these young people have such impact on their communities? They use theater, song, drumming, traditional dances referencing valor, bravery and community leadership, and originally written plays that carry strong social messages about making good, life-enhancing choices. We got to see them perform in even-more-rural villages than their own, in schools, and in front of the Simonga medical post. Crowds gather around them, and there is discussion afterwards from community members about what these little dramas reveal. We have never seen a stronger sense of community than in Simonga’s medical center; we’ve never witnessed a stronger lived commitment to the idea that human identity begins in community with others and thrives in care for them.
What’s next on the agenda? Our partner NGO—with whom we share an unshakeable vision—is devoted to providing capacity-building support to the most rural and needy outposts in Zambia, and they have determined, after commissioning a significant study by medical doctors, that our next target for an adolescent center should be in the District of Zimba, a much more rural area of the Southern Province.
We will be returning in March to visit the location of our next youth corner—a full 80 kilometers from the nearest hospital. Part of the money we raise to build it will include bringing Zimba youth to learn from the young role models at Simonga. We regularly receive from On Call reports of the curriculum and training that is being set in place with them, so that Simonga can take its place as a beacon of youth engagement and health.
We’re also writing with exciting news about our French non profit, Tonga Teen Corners, dedicated to building one adolescent-friendly space a year in a rural medical clinic in the Southern Province of Zambia. Not only did we reach our first goal this year of supporting the building and furnishing of a first center in the village of Simonga, but we also earned from the French government legal recognition of our NGO as of “general utility and interest.” This means that our project has met the standards of the French government to recognize donations to this humanitarian project with tax receipts. Henceforth, we can give our French donors a tax receipt recognized by the French tax authorities.
Our American friends and family are still invited to give directly to On Call Africa via its provider in the US which issues IRS-recognized tax receipts to American citizens. Every penny/centime we raised with you last year went directly to the building expenses; everything else we do, including our trips and time there, are strictly volunteer, including our personal decision recently to sponsor and support a young adult who is training to become a psycho-social counselor and who will work in the Simonga youth center while he is studying and afterwards.
We envision that this year’s project will require a financial engagement of $22,000 given Zimba’s remoteness and we thus invite you to give—anytime between now and May 2024 depending on your own tax calendar and countryto what we believe is a deeply worthy venture. We pledge to keep you informed of progress—last year’s donors can vouch for this— via photos and narratives, reflections, proof of achievement of goals, and rigorous financial accounting.
We hope you will share our enthusiasm for this work and join us in giving whatever amount to Tonga Teen Corners feels right to you. Small amounts go an enormous distance, so please don’t feel that any gift is too small.
Our gratitude—and that of our 30 teen ambassadors in Simonga, and those to come in Zimba this year—knows no bounds. As they, and we, say: tuyelele antomwe!
Warmest from us, as ever yours,
Dominique, Anne Thomasset, and Celeste
President, VP, and Founding Member of Tonga Teen Corners
