Press Release

U.S. Government Helps Okahandja Community To Help Itself

The American Embassy invites the media to the launch of the Okahandja Samaritans Network Centre at 09h00 on Friday, August 29, 2008 at Okahandja.

The Okahandja Samaritans Network Centre is a Centre for youth and women, which provides meals to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), as well as the elderly and terminally ill through its new soup kitchen.  The Centre also supplies food to people living with HIV/AIDS who are confined to their homes.  It also assists orphans and vulnerable children to go to school, stay in school, and do well in school by paying school fees and buying uniforms and school supplies.  The Centre further supplies creative activities for children at the new youth clubs to offer alternatives to being on the street, provides literacy and training programs to empower the community, and it creates income generating projects to make the community more self-sufficient.

In 2006, the Samaritans Network was awarded one of 27 grants under the U.S. Ambassador's Self-Help Program.  This program supports community-based projects throughout Namibia to alleviate poverty and fight HIV/AIDS.  Introduced in 1990, the U.S. Ambassador’s Self-Help Program has provided nearly US$ 2.2 million (between 1990 and 2007) in funding to over 350 community based development projects in Namibia. 

According to Mr. Matthew Harrington, the new Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, “This is exactly the type of creative, community-based project that the Ambassador's Small Self-Help Grants program was designed to support.  These grants respond to requests for financial assistance from small, community-based projects that are initiated and administered at the local level; include significant contributions in cash, labor, or materials from the local community; and are self-sustaining.”

Over the past three years, The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has supported the Ambassador's Self Help Program to fund initiatives in the fight against HIV/AIDS.  Through PEPFAR, the Self Help Program granted US$ 16,300 (N$ 115,000) to the Samaritans Network so that it might build this centre and better carry out its mission.

For directions to the Okahandja Samaritans Network Community Centre opening please contact either Joseph at 081-1222077, or Maria at 081-2853698.  For more information about the U.S. Ambassador's Self-Help Program or the PEPFAR program, please contact Public Affairs Officer, Ray Castillo, at 081-1280816, or Information Assistant, Roger Lyners, at 229801 [ext. 226].