Mbali The Village
Who We Are

The Journey continues

Our community based outreach initiative has been operating as a CSI under Splendid Shisanyama for the past 2 years. Having witnessed first-hand, the magical performance of the youth in this poverty stricken rural area, our heart/passion is to empower the youth of Ray Nkonyeni in relevant ways. MBALI THE VILLAGE is passionate about making a difference to disadvantaged learners from pre-school to young adolescence stage of life. Our sole purpose is to fuel/ignite vision, creativeness and align them with their full potential.

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Who We Are

The Journey

MBALI THE VILLAGE is a registered non-profit company based KwaNodalane, Izingolweni, Ray Nkonyeni Municipality. Izingolweni is a rural area with a high contingency of youth that are fending

for themselves, most of them lost their parents during the 1990's political violence. To this day the community has not recovered from those atrocities. Most of the homes are child-headed. Having grown

up in this area we discovered that most of the youth are unemployed.

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Vision

To enable our youth to unlock their fullpotential, resilience,self-confidence; in order to tackle poverty in this community to ensure food security,employment creation and economic growth.

Mission

To offer intervention programmes to enhance youth participation in their own community through academic support, nutrition, agricultural initiatives, sports and cultural activities

Bongi  

Directors
What We Do

Our Featured Programes

Nutrition

Our initiative is to provide nutrition to children in the morning. MBALI THE VILLAGE seeks to give a springboard which will ignite theirconcentration at school and heightentheir focus, breaking the cycle ofpoverty and nutritional deficiency




Academic Support

Our initiative is to utilize graduate students who are unemployed to assist or groom the children who suffer from a lack of academic support. Graduates practical experience will also assist them in securing employment so they can begin their own journey.




Agricultural Innitiatives

Our goal is to alleviate hunger in this community, while our aim is to achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture. In achieving this objective on food security, employment creation, and poverty reduction, it is critically important to examine and understand the challenges and opportunities of linking youth to profitable farming and identify appropriate entrepreneurial development paths.

Athletic Programmes

MBALI THE VILLAGE believes that the the early childhood stages of grooming of the youth should start as early as their first to second year after birth. We seek to take these initiatives of getting involved with various communities around Izingolweni to help kick-start youth involvement in sports from a very young age. Sport activities have been proven to be a big factor in curbing crime by gettingour youth involved in sports and having trainers, guidance talent scouts who canhelp shape their future.

Shelter

Violence against women and children has increased in recent years, and our village is not immune to the devastating effect.Seeing the scourge of such violence in our community, MBALI THE VILLAGE has opened its doors to shelter women and children who are escaping such brutality from their own families. MBALI THE VILLAGE is aware of the challenges faced by survivors of domestic violence and provides a place of safety for abused women and children in crisis.

Our Objectives

Fight against poverty, Fight against substance abuse, Fight against Gender-based violence, Fight against teenage pregnancy, Fight against HIV/Aids, Fight against Unemployment, Fight against bullying. Encourage Youth participation in events that will improve their communities. Offer Education and educational programs that actively support a culture of learning, academic achievement, technical skills, remedial, and career planning. Address Mental Health andWellness wellness issues.

Mbali

MBALI THE VILLAGE derives from the late Mbali Nzama’s passion for community upliftment especially inthe lives of youth in the area of Izingolweni (Ray Nkonyeni). This passion comes from her late father who was well known as Muhle uJesu an Evangelist in his time who worked unselfishly and tirelessly for his community. This promptedMbali to have a strong desire togive back to the community, thiswas unfortunately not realisedduring her time due to her untimelypassing. The place is called MBALITHE VILLAGE because of theconcept that says “It takes a Village to raise a child”, “to provide a safe,healthy environment for children,where children are given thesecurity they need to develop andflourish, and to be able to realizetheir hopes and dreams.”

Our Team

Meet our team

BONGI NZAMA - DIRECTOR  

”Bongi Nzama is a founder and funder of Mbali The Village, a nonprofit organization that gives hope to the community by providing breakfast to indigent school children in the early mornings before school starts in an attempt to curb and reduce hunger and nutrient deficiencies within the community. Over and above providing breakfast, Mbali the Village is assisting scholars with academic support; career guidance; connecting scholars with companies that offer bursaries, skills and training development and work readiness programs. Mbali The Village also facilitate sports and cultural activities as we believe that youth development programs such as these, enhance youth participation in their community and have been proven in our society to be the big responders to curbing crime, substance abuse, and teenage pregnancy.

A dynamic, highly motivated, Director with extensive experience in multiple industry lines, currently serving in the Audit and Risk Committee entrusted with amongst other things overseeing the functions of internal and external audit, Corporate Governance, Financial Controls ICT Governance, Functioning of the organisational monitoring and Risk Management, with a Diploma in Office Management, LLB Degree. An effective, diversified manager who possess high sense of moral integrity as well as loyalty and honesty as well as considerable amount of knowledge and experience accounted for by 18+ years’ in the Tax, Legal , Criminal Investigation, Customs and Global Trade industries where I was entrusted with ensuring criminal investigators investigate serious tax and customs offenses with a view to institute criminal prosecution, ensuring companies comply and operate in accordance with relevant statutory legal provisions, provide legal advice. Prior to managerial experience I have over 5+ years’ experience in office and secretarial management where I worked in a variety of organizations performing office management tasks for a variety of senior managers. An adept, excellent attention to detail, quick and successful response to ever changing environments and situations, to consistently achieve goals within critical project deadlinescoupled with great computer literacy and organizational skills. Able to work with, motivate and mentor diverse professional teams while leading by example as an individual contributor. As an individual I pride myself with having strong communication, leadership and relationship skills who is a contagious enthusiasm, a great team player and leader who can successfully drive and manage all senior manager related projects from start to finish in line with company’s vision."

Sydwell Mcebo Sihlangu is a Crop Scientist with 20 years of experience in agriculture, specializing in Mycology, Horticulture, and Agronomy. He holds a Ph.D. in Mycology and leads Eco-Agro Enterprise Pty Ltd, where he focuses on mushroom production, value-added products, and farmer training. 

Neo is an expert in ICT Governance, Strategy, Auditing, and Risk Management. She has significant experience aligning ICT with business strategies and supporting economic growth in the ICT sector, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. Neo also has in-depth knowledge of government policies and strategies.

Milestones

Having interacted with the youth in the area and seeing their passion, wedecided to host a competition that was self-funded.

We hosted acompetition for Ingoma Girls and Ingoma Boys with a stake of R20 000.

We further paid 1KZN TV and local Radio Stations to be part of the event.The youth turned up in their numbers coming from different localmunicipalities namely Ray Nkonyeni, Umuziwabantu, Umzumbe and Umdonimunicipalities to showcase their talent and grasp this amazing opportunity. The competition attracted over 500 contestants from 20 different groupsfrom UGU District Municipality

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