Bill Gates Poverty Ambassador

Thandiwe Khumalo is championing the cause of those who often are without a voice. As a graduate of OBV’s Parliamentary Shadowing Scheme, where she shadowed MP Meg Hillier, she is using her passion for politics to advocate at the highest levels to raise awareness of and combat global poverty.

Khumalo works as a senior practitioner at Hammersmith and Fulham hospital working primarily with mentally ill patients; which has given her a “greater insight”, awareness and understanding of the most disenfranchised in our society. In a prime position to propagate the valid points of view and opinions from her patients, she hopes to contribute a more sympathetic, less cynical eye, one which she hopes to advocate to political leaders.

Last month, Khumalo achieved the prestigious position of a Bill Gates Poverty Ambassador, a programme established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In her new role, she will become an Ambassador of the Global Development Division which works to help the world’s poorest people lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. Khumalo has always been particularly socially conscious which contributed in part to her gaining this voluntary position, which she hopes to use to raise awareness with those in authority of the very real and growing global problem of poverty, using the staple ‘ 1.4 Billion Reasons’ presentation.

The ‘1.4 Billion Reasons’ presentation addresses the fact that there are approximately 1.4 billion people in the world currently living in extreme poverty, 1.4 billion people living on less than £1 a day. It aims to make people conscious of this fact and to educate them on how they can help.

Being a single parent she is also further concerned about how child poverty is increasing, and empathises with others in similar circumstances who are perhaps less fortunate. Khumalo says that whilst motherhood is an endlessly rewarding job it does have its difficulties and is very demanding. Poverty means losing one’s rights she states and children are frequently the unwitting casualties, pleading that people not be “written off” simply because they are poor, that it is not a choice, more often than not it is an imposition.

A passionate activist, one who takes pleasure in prioritising and successfully inspiring changes she admits that in her arena she has felt excluded and has to work twice as hard to prove herself – an opinion which seems to be common and almost endemic to the working minority woman.

Originally from Africa, Thandiwe acknowledges the many societal changes that have been made since she first came to Britain but maintains that more is necessary. This is due to, in Khumalo’s opinion, the continuing financial crisis. She says that poverty equals friction and that segmentation and racism are intensifying putting those of BME backgrounds at a rising disadvantage at all levels of the social order. Clearly the recession effects more than our bank balances.

Thandiwe’s insight is born of family values instilled in her youth and is perhaps the result of a philanthropic family legacy as her grandfather was a missionary and her grandmother received an MBE for her charitable work back in Africa. She is resolved not to look back, though she has come far she declares that “complacency is not the way forward”. There is still high poverty and unemployment in the BME community at large and she is determined to continue to tackle it head on.

A group observer for the Labour party Khumalo is actively involved in her local community, frequently taking part in church food banks. She hopes for a full-time role in politics, with the ever-present goal of making a difference. Her advice to any and all who would hope to do the same is that:

you will face challenges, obstacles but that should never become a deterrent and to keep trying hard no matter how many times you are knocked down, rise again. We as minority women must stick together, help each other more, knowing that each individual’s success is a victory for the collective. The power is in us, but we still have to be the one to make the changes, force them to materialise so that our tomorrow will be better than our today.”

Ashlea Williams