About Us

Helvi Wheeler

Founder

Helvi is an award-winning author of children’s books, and Founder of Yambeka Children Media (YCM) a community Social Enterprise created to promote African languages, tales and the culture of reading. 


Helvi completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology at Wilberforce University in Ohio, and a Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Illinois. As a young mother Helvi  struggled to find toddler’s books written in Oshiwambo or containing the tales she grew up with. 

 Unable to find anything that was appealing to young children, she decided to develop her own range of colorful reads reflecting her cultural heritage. Since then she has written books targeting children of 0 – 13 years in English, Oshiwambo and Swahili, and looks forwards to having them translated into as many African languages as possible.


 To date she has published more than eight children books. Helvi has attended and exhibited at international book fairs in Cape Town, Nairobi, and the world biggest book fair in Frankfurt. As well as establishing Yambeka Children Media, Helvi has initiated the Namibian Book Fair (NBF).    

Vision

Yambeka Children Media (YCM) commits its effort to help develop a reading culture among children in Namibia community, and with the aim of sensitizing the importance of reading and writing through various created platforms for our young and future generation.

Mission

Yambeka Children Media (YCM) mission is to innovatively strategize various local children content that is educational, informative. We strive for excellence and bringing back competitive education in our school system beginning with our children today.

Organisation Background

 

Yambeka Children Media is a Social Enterprise which was foundedby Helvi Itenge Wheeler  in 2009. Yambeka is a term which literally means “Blessed” in the Oshiwambo language, spoken by the Ovambo people in the southern African country of Namibia.

Yambeka Children Media was created to promote Namibian and other African languages, history, and traditional stories for children between 0-13 years.To date Yambeka Children Media has published 12 children books.


Organisation Objectives


  • To educate the Namibian children, about our cultural heritage, history and encourage them to be proud.
  • To publish various books that the Namibian children can identify themselves with, and read the stories on our National radio and television.
  • To publish Namibian tales and share them with the children of the world to enjoy the same way the Namibian children enjoy fairly tales from other various cultures.
  • To translate all our books in different languages that branch out from Namibian languages such as Otjiherero, Oshiwambo, Damara/Nama, RuKwangali and more. as well as other African Languages i.e : Swahili, Zulu, Tswana and Xhosa