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Tendai Rupapa in ENGLAND
EMPOWERMENT champion, First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa had a heart-to-heart and sisterly discussion with like-minded Princess Katarina Desilva of Serbia who is an Ambassador of Birmingham Youth Sports Academy (BYSA), which rescues children from the streets and involves them in sporting activities.
This, she said, was a way of rehabilitating and empowering them.
The academy operates along the same lines as Dr Mnangagwa’s Angel of Hope Foundation.
Through the Foundation, the First Lady takes children living and working on the streets of major cities and commits them to the Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa Children’s Home where they are undergoing rehabilitation and being equipped with vocational training skills while some are attending school.
Princess Desilva expressed willingness to partner Angel of Hope Foundation and Amai Mnangagwa formally extended an invitation to her to visit Zimbabwe and explore various areas of cooperation with her.
Dr Mnangagwa also met Mrs Ritu Prakash Chhabria and her husband Mr Prakash Chhabria, founders of Mukul Madav Foundation, to whom she also extended an invitation to visit Zimbabwe to see for themselves, the work she is doing on the ground.
Mukul Madhav Foundation (MMF) works with vulnerable communities and individuals to enable them live a life with equal access to resources and opportunities through sustainable, long-term, and strategic initiatives.
“Your Royal Highness I am inviting you officially to come to Zimbabwe. It is good for you to come and see what Angel of Hope Foundation is doing to empower vulnerable groups.
“At the same time, I am inviting you for tourism purposes as well,” Dr Mnangagwa said, triggering cheers and nods of approval during the meeting with Princess Desilva.
The Princess is also an ambassador for different tourism boards.
In response, she said: “I would love to. My mother was a medical person and she helped different countries and her father was very close to another African country and also helped them enormously. Therefore, charity is in my blood.”
The Princess said, like Dr Mnangagwa, she does a lot of humanitarian work and is keen to work with Angel of Hope Foundation in areas of health, education and youth empowerment
“I like to work with different countries and with our foundation we like to help mainly the youths. Our aim is to make the youth of today visible in our community. BYSA provides football coaching and other sporting activities of the highest quality. We are giving youths the opportunity to be responsible, active and be a part of teams to gain leadership skills, providing the opportunity where possible to allow them to gain qualifications. We also like to work with schools and hospitals because there is a lot which people need to know that health and education actually run together,” she said.
She said they would be in discussions with the Angel of Hope Foundation to see how best they can move forward.
Amai Mnangagwa is also fighting drug abuse in youths through sports.
She introduced a first of its kind rehabilitation programme for the benefit of drug survivors through sport.
Football legends will also be in attendance scouting talent thereby empowering the youths.
Her mission is to raise awareness on drug abuse, addiction and prevention thus achieving the goal of making the country free of dangerous drugs.
Princess Desilva was thrilled when she heard of the sports rehabilitation programme and said it goes hand-in-glove with the vision of BYSA.
She reiterated that it was important for her to partner AOH and empower the youths.
In the high-level meeting, Dr Mnangagwa chronicled the various programmes she is undertaking to improve the welfare of the people from health programmes to fighting drug abuse and promoting nutritious traditional grains.
“In line with the Government of Zimbabwe’s policy thrust of leaving no one and no place behind, I wish to highlight the philanthropic work being carried out by my Angel of Hope Foundation. We have a number of ongoing activities across the whole country, Zimbabwe. I am into cancer awareness and screening programmes at the same time. I have a mobile bus which is fully equipped and that is the bus that I take around the country urging the marginalised, the aged and the disabled to come and be checked. At the same time, I will be having some supporting teams from the Ministry of Health and Child Care,” she said.
The mother of the nation spoke about the health centre she built in her rural home of Chiweshe which has come in handy for the community.
“I built a clinic in the rural area where I was born which I thought was small, but now the people it is serving are many and they are coming from all over to access services,” she said.
Dr Mnangagwa said she was in the process of building a rehabilitation centre for the youths and expressed her wish to also equip them with skills to be able to fend for themselves after rehabilitation.
“My foundation has partnered with one of the local universities which is an open university and I am saying everyone come and let us go back to school. We do not ask where you ended your school, there are short courses for them including business management so that they are equiped with knowledge on how to start a business, manage profit, taught on how one expands his or her business and also to be self-disciplined in terms of finances so that they do bookkeeping and marketing of the product,” she said.
The courses, Dr Mnangagwa said, had been widely embraced by the people.
“I am also empowering the girl child where we have seen a lot of school dropouts because of Covid-19 lockdowns. However, in our country, our Government under the leadership of President ED Mnangagwa said you can come back and continue with school after you have given birth but we have found out that most of them are now shy of being laughed at by their friends and have chosen to have some skills so that they are able to use their hands and fend for their children,” she said.
The Princess acknowledged Dr Mnangagwa’s efforts and openly said most of the things the First Lady had said were close to her heart.
“Everything you said is also close to my heart,” she said and explained how she loved to visit Zimbabwe.
The princess, who is also the patron of English Orchestras expressed willingness to introduce school orchestras in Zimbabwe.
“I am also a patron of English schools orchestras and I think it’s something as a patron, I could introduce to your country. What is the main thing that keeps the world together? Music and dance,” she said.
“I am happy to come and help you in any way. I would love to go round and see your hospitals and schools in Zimbabwe and see how best i can help,” she said.
Mrs Chhabria who was accompanied by her husband Mr Prakash Chhabria expressed gratitude to have met Dr Mnangagwa and holding wide-ranging discussions with her.
“It was a great pleasure to meet Her Excellency, it was a very nice fruitful meeting that we did on behalf of the Hinduja family we were happy to host her. We spoke about various different things, we spoke about mother and child, health, we spoke about education, about skilling, vocational training for women and we were happy to hear about what she is doing in Zimbabwe, she is working on the ground, working with communities. This is also what we do, the philosophy of our work is to work on the ground to see how we can do rural development to bring good medical equipment to the hospitals and to see how health could be better, education could be better, women and their skilling should better as well,” she said.
Mrs Chhabria said her family was happy to have been invited to Zimbabwe by the First Lady.
“Shortly we will visit Zimbabwe. I will also connect Angel of Hope Foundation to various different people and organisations that we have been working with and see how that works. We will see how we can collaborate and make a difference in the lives of people in Zimbabwe complimenting the First Lady’s works. I think we would look at health as number one and see how we can bring resources, training of doctors, medical facilities, to bring in medical equipment also to introduce her to one of our big vaccine producers from India so that we have better vaccinations for women, children and I think that is the need of the hour to see how we can progress to health and education primarily,” she said.
Amai Mnangagwa is the country’s Health and Child Care Ambassador and she works hand in hand with the Ministry.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter