Listed below, starting with those most recently supported, are some of the smaller initiatives the Trust has funded.
The Namibia Rural Women’s Assembly (NRWA) is a rural women’s organisation that is a self-organised network of rural feminist movements affiliated to the Rural Women’s Assembly, active across many southern African countries, which has a focus on rural leadership, land issues and food independence.
Funding by the Twin Hills Trust has assisted the NRWA to hold two training and planning meetings. One was a training workshop to help participants learn to process, preserve and market food products. The second was to allow assembly members to meet with government representatives to discuss the sustainable management of forests.
Many disabled children in Namibia are stigmatised and do not receive adequate therapy or education. The Taking Hands Centre is an integrative educational centre in Hakahana, Omaruru, that brings together about 25 pre-school children, some of whom are disabled and some able-bodied, to play and learn together. This bringing-together helps reduce the stigma around disabilities in the community. Disabled children also receive treatment and therapy, and all children are provided with a balanced daily meal.
The centre also provides a safe space for scholars to do their homework in the afternoons, which currently includes about 45 children with learning disabilities, who follow a special reading and mathematics programme, and receive extra life skills and language (English, Afrikaans, Khoekhoegowab and Oshindonga) lessons. A soccer team trains three times a week.
Have-a-Heart provides free dog and cat spay and neuter services to pet owners with low or no income. The organisation’s goal is the humane reduction of the number of stray animals, thus eliminating the need for mass-euthanasia whilst improving the health and welfare status of township dogs and cats. Dogs and cats are also vaccinated and treated for parasites, which has health benefits for animals themselves, as well as human communities and local wildlife populations.
In 2019, before the Twin Hills Trust was set up, Osino organised a regional early childhood development (ECD) training initiative in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare. Thirty-two crèche caregivers (educarers), most of whom run small crèches in informal settlements across four towns in the Erongo Region, were trained over a seven-week period. Many of these créches are now supported by the Trust in collaboration with the ECD initiative managed by Development Workshop Namibia.
The Twin Hills Trust is a not-for-profit organisation, registered and based in Namibia.
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