From having only R300 in his bank account and no car when he founded his NGO, to winning a national award for his contribution towards keeping the environment clean and educating the youth about recycling:
This is the journey of Giving them Wings Foundation CEO and founder, Siya Ntsumpa, who was recently announced as the winner of the PETCO SA AWARD in the Environment, Education and Awareness Initiative Category.
The foundation, which was launched in 2014, has been focusing on sustainable living projects and environmental education for children in schools.
“Winning this award is so overwhelming because the kind of work that I do is picking up bottles with kids on Fridays and coordinating clean-ups. It’s such grassroots work that you don’t think it’s going to get anyone’s attention.
“You just do it because you are in the community and want to make a difference and be of service to the community,” Ntsumpa said.
“You don’t wake up planning to win an award. It’s such a wonderful surprise and so motivating. Since we are an NGO, we do rely on a good reputation and making an impact in the community, so this just means that we are doing something worthwhile for our communities,” he added.
According to Ntsumpa, two years before he started the foundation, he had been volunteering at a school in Motherwell and witnessed a lot of waste mismanagement and plastic pollution. He wanted to be someone who provided a solution that would be easy for the children to participate in.
“The kids didn’t have any extracurricular projects that they were doing and there was nothing to keep them busy. I did a little bit of research and at the time, the only amount of money that I had, was to open the bank account. I didn’t have any kind of funding. That’s how it started and today it has just ballooned into something that is great,” he explained.
Ntsumpa said that it was very important for him that people in the townships, especially the youth, understood the impact that people had on the environment and marine life, including the importance of food security by having food gardens at home and school.
“This is the reason why I started the NGO and, in the beginning, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea how to run an NGO and it was really just learning every step of the way.
“There’s a lot of education and empowerment that needs to take place in our community.
“There’s also a need for resources. I might have been recognised for this project, maybe because I have put in the work, but there are a lot of people who are doing small things in our community that need support. These are people that are recycling for themselves and collecting materials for recycling. So for me, education is important, because every single citizen in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro can play a role in the fight against the waste crisis.
Ntsumpa mentioned that the NGO was currently busy with projects in six different schools in Motherwell and, since they are situated so close to each other, there is friendly competition among them.
“What we do is, let’s say on a Friday, the kids from one school will walk with me to the neighbouring school to see their projects and then they share ideas and knowledge and become competitive.
“You would find that one school does not want to get beaten by the other and that’s how you motivate and inspire the kids to compete with one another,” he explained.
As part of his win, Ntsumpa not only received a certificate but also R20 000 towards the running of the organisation.
“It is going to be so wonderful because we really, honestly depend on donations.
“It’s so extremely difficult getting financial support to do community projects, especially in the field of the environment.
“We are so grateful,” he concluded.
