[mnf]

My Name is Frank Malunga, I am a young Zambian creative, passionate about sharing ideas, initiatives and innovations that seek to provide solutions to local community challenges, among young people in order to foster the sense of responsibility, owning owning our own stories, using our local experiences for personal development and also meaningfully participating in national and Global matters such as the Agenda 2030.

I personally believe, it is not true that local or indigenous African citizens, also speaking for those from my country Zambia, do not have ideas, Initiatives and innovations that can be solutions to locally faced community challenges, such that only foreign policies should determine how we live?!

The initiatives may lack the scientific methodologies or resources, but that is where, we creatives privileged enough to be in institutions such the APHRC come in, to guide and to integrate those local ideas Initiatives and innovations into more scientific and globally fit methods of implementation.

I am the founder of a Youth led organizations based in Zambia, which has now spread with active provincial teams in about 4 of the 10 provinces in Zambia, the Scientific Initiatives for a Healthy and Developed Zambia (SiHDZ pronounced as seeds), aka Scientific Initiatives Zambia, is a nonprofit nongovernmental organizations registered with the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services MCDSC of the Zambian government, registered in 2021 and since it has Conducted a number of community activities in there areas Community Health and empowerment. Here we are trying to create platforms systems and opportunities for Adolescent and Young People, women and marginalized groups including people living with disability and the elderly.

We believe by identifying, promoting and supporting local ideas Initiatives and innovations, we can empower locals to get engaged in solving local community challenges.

By leveraging technology and innovations, we hope to conduct research and provide evidence based solutions in Health and Development.

Hence we divide our major thematic areas namely Health and Development into 4 to 7 specific areas;

1. Community Health Innovations

2. Community Development and Socioeconomic Initiatives

3. Research, Advocacy and Education

4. Cross cutting Issues such as climate change, food security, infection prevention and WASH, social security and others..

It is there a rare honor to be part of such a program as thought fit by this amazing team at APHRC. My team and I look forward to gaining more experiences and deliver according to your guidance.

We also look forward to networking with colleagues working in the same areas as ours and also work to learn from even those not necessarily looking at what we are doing as young people from SiHDZ.