A telephone interview starting with a joyful and bubbly “hello” and on the receiving end was Nompumelelo ‘Mpumi’ Khumalo, a 27-year-old social-entrepreneur and women’s activist who is born and bred in eMalahleni.
Khumalo who is also the co-founder of the ‘Who Is Woman,’ a fast evolving organization that has their primary focus on empowering women through collaborations and networking, says that her passion for social-entrepreneurship stemmed from the disadvantageous dilemmas she saw throwing women aback, especially in the corporate world.
Speaking to her social entrepreneurship journey, Khumalo places the accent on the importance of collaboration within the various spaces that she has been exposed to, saying that had it not been for her business partner on ‘Who Is Woman,’ Hlengiwe Mokele, parts of her vision to be a voice for women would not have been amplified.
Khumalo says that she definitely hopes to see more women thriving in their respective industries whilst working swiftly alongside each other and tackling challenges that they continue to face in their lines of work.
Another topics that Khumalo holds dear to her heart is that of Mental Health, she says that though she does not have a platform where she openly advocates for people living with mental health issues, she has, on several occasions, privately assisted people living with these issues.
Khumalo feels that she best resonates with issues relating to mental health because she has previously had to deal with these issues herself; having being diagnosed with depression in 2013, she says that nothing helped her as much as anti-depressants coupled with prayer.
Khumalo expresses that she really was in denial when she first learned of her mental illness because of the stigmas surrounding the killer disease, even with evidence stemming from her childhood trauma and past personal experiences.
Khumalo is currently working on a new interactive platform, ‘Qhawekazi Speaks’ that is set to launch later this year.
Khumalo also wishes to possibly write a book, in the near future, detailing all her life’s events leading up to her success.
She advises social entrepreneurs to always consider what it is that they can do to change current socio-economic issues, relating personally to them or that of their communities “Think about what you can do now today – Your mentality should be about changing one life at a time.
Believe in God and the gifts He has given you, these gifts will bring a solution to current crisises faced by nations.”
