Annual Letter 2024: Sharing Knowledge and Building Together
Updated: May 8
Dearest Friends, Family and Supporters,
As we approach Thanksgiving—a holiday that inspires the desire to give back—and the now-nationalized Giving Tuesday just beyond it next week, I’m writing to give you news of our passion project in Zambia, Tonga Teen Corners, as it enters its third year. My partner Dominique Delor, a public health doctor, our dear friend Anne Thomasset, a pharmacist who has participated in 11 missions to Madagascar, and I, a lifelong educator, continue to believe passionately in the impact of constructing youth-friendly spaces within rural medical posts in the Southern Province of Zambia.
We also share and support the re-elected Zambian government’s commitment to free education through high school for every young Zambian, its provision of 50% scholarships for high achievers to support completion of college and graduate school, as well as its vision for a national health care program that is focused on the fact that 70% of the population in this country is under 30. Our ongoing work there is in alignment with the government’s thoughtful plan for addressing persistent issues for youth, such as addictions, early and unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, early marriage, and the inevitable and consequent failure to complete schooling by means of education and preventive public health. In fact, in Zambia, health and education go hand in hand—both in Zambian policy and in our own hearts and activities.
The early supporters amongst you will remember the stories of our first year—the month-long medical/educational audit we did at the request of our dear friends Charles and Emma Stewart, who introduced us to this beloved country; the fortuitous meeting with our local partner NGO, On Call Africa, whose retreat from bringing in foreign doctors in favor of shoring up local capacity mirrored our own observations and decisions; the adventures we had in local markets with adept Zambian wood carvers, as we commissioned the sculptures of male and female sexual organs requested by the nurses at Simonga village medical post to support their teaching of sexual health.
In that first year, thanks to many of you, we raised the money to build our first center, to work with the peer ambassadors who would staff it, and to create the imagery and motto that would inspire all of us—students, nurses, trainers, NGO workers, government staff, and us—to press on with such a promising project. As a result of that first renovation at Simonga, the village medical post has been upgraded to a center and it has received additional staff. Once a post has been renovated by NGOs and international donors, the government upgrades its status and rapidly provides highly trained personnel.
In this our second year, we began to reap the benefits of our first youth-friendly space at Simonga. Student Ambassadors are in place as peer counselors, receiving their peers after school for good fun, tips on living a “positive life,” as they call it, and guidance in every aspect of health and education. Boyd Nyundu, the young man on the right below, is now the leader of those efforts; he and Loveless Kashina, a young woman in their group, have been hired to be “frontline actors” at the Center, which will also soon receive a hire of a psycho-social counselor. Two more students will be hired to distribute contraceptives, which are legal and openly available in Zambia. Boyd is also a promising engineering student who envisions higher education in his future. In the middle is Gilbert, whom we all affectionately call in French Gil-berr, has his sights trained on medical school in Lusaka. Kelvin on the left is a fabulous artist with a charismatic personality—he’s mounting a business in hospitality.
They all do hands-on work with students of the village, using active learning techniques, and teamwork. And always celebrating with music and dance in beautiful, traditional costumes.
These same peer ambassadors travel regularly—as active role models—to surrounding villages to present plays and musical events designed to provoke community discussion of critical social issues. We have stood in remote villages with them, watching as their drumbeat brought people running from every direction to see them perform. We met with 14 year old girls who were pregnant with the babies of men who passed through the village (not their peers), as they were being sensitively greeted and invited to attend the center by Myriam, one of the remarkable Simonga nurses. In the villages, these students openly act out the consequences of early marriage and pregnancy, unsafe home abortion efforts, failure to use contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, always ending with a reminder of the critical importance of staying in school. Each session closes with a community discussion. Nothing is more important than these outreach activities in terms of social change.
In this second year of Tonga Teen Corners, after traveling six hours on unpaved roads to Chidi to see the site, we also approved construction of our second space in a very remote set of villages in Zimba, where one brave, sturdy, middle-aged male nurse struggles valiantly and with an enviable sense of purpose to meet the needs of 11,000 people, delivering 20 babies minimum per month!
Once the renovations are completed at Chidi next spring, it too will be upgraded to a center and it too will receive additional highly trained staff provided by the government. As I write, our trusted partner NGO in Zambia, On Call Africa, is making plans to expand construction in what will be our third year (2025-2026) to three youth-friendly corners in rural medical posts, so enthusiastic has response been to the first two. In addition, students from subsequent spaces will travel to learn from the original Simonga peer ambassadors.
Thanks to many of you reading this letter, we raised 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’ve also raised about half of what we need ($22,000) to complete the second center at Chidi, pictured below, currently in progress.
Students are already meeting with On Call staff in the half-built building, so that everything will be in place and activities organized as soon as the doors officially open and the building is transferred to the Chidi community. Meet Kaso below, a talented musician in his own right, On Call’s coordinator for youth development and our trusted friend and training partner.
Creating youth-friendly spaces in rural Zambia may be a tiny project in the scope of things, but it is a mighty one. At a moment of world turmoil and uncertainty, Tonga Teen Corners is making a difference, one young life at a time.
Here’s where you—friends and family—come in.
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. We are grateful for every single contribution.
By next year we will have a website in place, currently in creation, and in between we apprise all of our donors in real time while we are on the ground in Zambia with WhatsApp narratives of our work, and videos and pictures of our students’ activities.
Our gratitude—and that of our 30 teen ambassadors in Simonga, and those currently being trained in Zimba, and the thirty who will one day staff the center at Mapatizya, reaching outward, each of them, to youth in the villages that surround them—knows no bounds. Please be part of this multiplier effect with us.
Our students’ motto and ours says it all: tuyeyele antomwe! Let us share our knowledge and work together for the good of all!
Warmest from us, as ever yours, Celeste, Dominique, and Anne
