• Sport

‘We Race Together’ initiative raises over a million

- 2022-08-08 00:00:00

Sports Reporter
MTC and partners have announced that through the ‘We Race Together’ initiative, more than N$1.4 million was raised.
In a statement released on Thursday last week, the company said the proceeds will be split between two community programmes targeting sustainable food security and small and medium enterprise (SME) empowerment.
The sustainable food security project will support at least 10 different community garden projects across the country.
The purpose of the support is to have a lasting impact by helping communities execute a planned community garden, assisting an already existing garden with necessary support and increasing productivity.
“It is important to note that the community garden projects need to have a strong element of sustainability, has to benefit the community, and has to have an impact on the community in order to qualify for this aid.
“While we may be looking more at group-based projects, it is a fact that there may be individually run or established gardens that may need assistance and can benefit the community, through either skills transfer and employment or access to affordable food,” MTC stated.
Empowerment
Food security is a need in many areas of the country, but food hand-out programmes are not sustainable as they create a dependency syndrome, the company said.
Growing food for consumption and profit, on the other hand, is a more sustainable and long-term option for food security.
“This project will hence address sustainable food security to create self-sustaining communities,” said MTC corporate affairs manager John Ekongo.
Ekongo explained that the second project concerns SME youth empowerment and is targeted to support at least 70 vocationally trained graduates by procuring and providing them with start-up equipment grants.
The aim is to grow sustainable SME youth employment and make an impact on the Namibian youth across the country.
Ekongo said with youth unemployment standing at approximately 40%, the numbers of unemployed young people, especially in the semi-skilled industry, have “increased due to the halt of many industrial activities which provided jobs for them.
As a result, they have been left out of the economy.
Furthermore, previously disadvantaged vocationally trained youth are standing way behind in the queue for opportunities.”
A public call for applications will be put out for deserving individuals to apply for this support.