Our #WCW is Shylette Ngwenya, a medical student at the University of Zimbabwe and is fashioning a career in philanthropy through voluntary work that includes provision of medical assistance to marginalised communities.
Twenty-three-year-old Shylette Ngwenya started working as a volunteer for Doctors and Nurses on a Mission in 2021.
Since then, she has earned a number of awards in recognition of her work. They include the Covid-19 Frontline Heroine award presented by Ignite Youth, a youth organisation.
She is also a volunteer with an organisation named GirlUp Zimbabwe, while she also wears numerous other hats. She is into motivational speaking, works as a data analyst at Hype Voyage, is a UZ Enactus member, programme manager at Impetus Infinity and Christian Medical Foundation co-chairperson.
Ngwenya traces her inspiration to assist marginalised communities back to her childhood in rural Binga, where her father died after failing to get medical assistance.
“Sometimes I feel this field is way too demanding. But at the end of the day, I am content that this space is where God chose me to be because after I lost my dad, I realised that this was not the kind of loss that I would ever want to experience.
“I watched my father getting sick. He was bed-ridden for months. He couldn’t even go to hospital because of the bills.
In 2018, she passed her A-Level examinations and enrolled as a medical student at the UZ the following year. There, she started taking online courses for leadership programmes and reading development books, which taught her life principles, among other things.
Through seminars she attended, she learnt public speaking skills, how to articulate issues and making presentations.
Having an impact on the next generation, especially young people in marginalised areas who have the potential, but lack opportunities, has become a calling for Ngwenya.
“So, I have stood in the gap to help those in primary schools to pay tuition fees, because I believe that coming from that environment myself, I was not going to be where I am today.
