Charity profile

The Umthombo Youth Development Foundation identifies, trains, and supports rural youth to become qualified health care professionals in order to address the human resource shortages at rural hospitals - thereby improving healthcare to rural communities. On completion of their training, these young health care professionals work year-for-year at one of the 17 participating rural hospitals in return for the opportunity they had to study a health science degree.

Our organisation provides comprehensive mentoring and financial support to these rural students during their studies, and assists them on graduation to integrate into the hospital working environment and become professional health care workers. Through our mentoring support programme, our students are achieving exceptional successes: our university pass rate in 2020 was 93%, way exceeding the national average of around 50%.

Our approach is sustainable and competitive from an investment point of view: while the cost of training 254 graduates (2015 graduate numbers) was R186 million, these graduates will pay R1,2 billion in personal income tax over their lifetime.

To date 488 health science graduates have been produced (178 are Doctors), the majority of which are working in public rural health care facilities in Kwa-Zulu-Natal. In addition, 57% of our graduates are young women! The Umthombo graduates become role models in their communities and encourage the rural youth to work hard, focus and stay HIV negative in order to achieve their dreams.

In 2020, we are supporting 169 rural youth to study 15 different health science degrees. For more in-depth information on our organization, read our latest Annual Report or visit www.umthomboyouth.org.za

For further information:

• Tel: +27 (0)31-765-5774
• Fax: +27 (0)86 577 5774
• Email: info@umthomboyouth.org.za