From Volunteer Coordinator to Systems Builder: Kasonde Mulenaga’s Journey
- Mar 28
- 3 min read
Updated: May 6
If you drive out of Livingstone along the long, straight roads toward Simonga, Chidi or Mapatizya, it is likely that, at some point, you will meet Kasonde Mulenga on his way to or from a clinic. Based in Livingstone and working with On Call Africa for the past three years, Kasonde is now project coordinator. He oversees several programs at once, including the youth-friendly spaces, which Tonga Teen Corners and On Call Africa collaborated on. Kasonde also helps host volunteer doctors from the United Kingdom who come to work alongside Zambian staff. He describes himself as a community development specialist, and his path to this role has been anything but accidental.
Kasonde’s journey in community service began in 2014 with VSO ICS Zambia, where he worked on adolescent health projects that brought British and Zambian youth volunteers together. He learned early what it means to mobilize communities, manage volunteer teams and watch budgets carefully. Later, in Tanzania with African Impact Kilimanjaro, he designed and evaluated programs around adult literacy, adolescent health and youth leadership.
Along the way he completed an Accounting Technician Diploma and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Development Studies from the National Institute of Public Administration. These experiences, taken together, have given him both the practical and analytical tools he brings to the collaboration between On Call Africa and Tonga Teen Corners.
Impressions from Kaso's work in communities across SImonga, Chidi and Mapatizya
What drew him to On Call Africa in 2022 was not only the subject matter but the method. Friends who had worked with the organization spoke about an approach that looked beyond short-term projects to the sustainability of the whole health system. “I don’t disagree that you need external help and people,” he explains, “but it needs to be the right fit of the skills to the programs on the ground.” At On Call Africa, he saw a real systems approach: programs that begin with facilities and communities identifying their own gaps, that pair new youth corners with other essential infrastructure, and that leave clinic staff and volunteers stronger, not dependent.
Working so closely with youth and health workers has changed him too. Coordinating trainings, meetings and community visits has sharpened his public speaking and leadership skills. Constantly listening to adolescents has required a personal openness to topics that have long been difficult to address. He speaks of learning to talk plainly about sex and other critical issues that young people live with every day but that, for reasons of culture and religion, have often been left unspoken, and remain taboo across large parts of the population. These conversations have confirmed for him how much authority and insight young people already have, and how much difference it makes when adults take them seriously.
For Kasonde, the youth corners that Tonga Teen Corners funds are one part of a larger picture. In Simonga, Chidi and now Mapatizya, he has helped ensure that new spaces are built, staffed and animated by trained youth leaders, and connected to broader initiatives in hygiene, maternal health and community outreach. At Chidi, he has worked on a model that combines health education with practical skills, such as sewing, to keep the center active and to offer young people ways to earn an income. Looking ahead to future sites like Botoka and Mubuyu, he is already asking how lessons from one village can be adapted to another.
When asked what he would say directly to friends and family abroad who support this work, his answer is simple and firm. By supporting these projects, he says, you are bringing health services as close as possible to people’s homes. For those who face cultural or physical barriers to care, this may be the only way they will ever receive the information and services they need. “You are literally saving people’s lives.”
