!Am Ho!â, a savoury story

Elizabeth Joseph !Am Ho!â is a living ecosystem for sustainable rural development through the use of technology enabled access to global responsible and ecotourism markets.“!Am Ho!â for us as the !Am Ho!â family is more than just a business, it is a savoury story and unusual journey of or by locals and their authentic cultures, environment, history and livelihoods as experienced on a daily basis,” says Gerhard Samuel Ndembere, director of marketing, sales and public relations. The Journey Ndembere says the journey for the Gaweseb family as the !Am Ho!â founders has been an implausible life experience in the making from the onset. He further mentions that as an open-minded, lower-middle income family of nine that wasn’t spared by the divisive brunt of inequality by the apartheid era, for years in the family meetings the Gaweseb family have interrogated self-empowerment ideas with the zeal of idealists. “This was in hopes of finding the right empowerment concept that would enable us to own, share and make a living of our Namibian story without compromising our ideals of spirituality, community service, environmental and cultural protection whilst enjoying economic emancipation,” he says. In 2014, they collectively funded a research and development expedition that over the course of five years saw the company conservatively spending over N$400 000, interviewing a dozen experts, reviewing more than a 1000 research literature, with more than five concept pivots, meeting 25 communal conservancies, travelling 14 627 km across the country, working over 1 240 days and 9 920 hours up until that very point where they arrived in 2019 conceptualising a sustainable impact enterprise which is now !Am Ho!â Travels and Stays.Employees and CultureThere are eight !Am Ho!â associates altogether. The company’s culture goes hand in hand with their values which are Trust, Authentic unusual and Immersive Green Experiences, Sustainable Belonging, Volunteerism, Next Generation Education and Succession. The company strives to live on a foundation of trustworthiness and reliability on which they build their organisational culture.“Sustainable belonging gives way to authentic, unusual and immersive green experiences which starts within the office space. We conduct interviews by telling you our story, our vision and objectives and give you the power to join us or not. We take pride in volunteerism before anything else, and even before the monetary value,” Ndembere further notes. The Future of !Am Ho!â Ndembere says they hope that the !Am Ho!â ecosystem will be fully operational and their technology should be achieving its objectives in terms of giving economic access to the rural communities. Company Activities Ndembere boasts that !Am Ho!â has always been at the forefront of initiating sponsored activities. “Yes, we are in the process of initiating a wellness activity and a conservancy development trust where we give a certain percentage of the revenues to the conservancy trust for the development of the conservancies,” he further adds. The company measures their success through prudent planning and it has established smart performance indicators. They are divided in phases and quarterly monitoring and evaluation reviews.Giving back to the community“Our company has the conservancy development trust which of every transaction that goes through the !Am Ho!â technology is alluded to the trust for actual community development,” Ndembere says. In the pipelineOne of the biggest projects they are currently working on is the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) which advocates for next-generation education and succession around the concepts of sustainable development, green economy and conservation. The CLP through engaging youth envisions to create a world of equitable and sustainable green experiences, livelihoods, lifestyles and industries. It would then create a journey for its members to realise how they can relate to nature and culture in relation to their psychosocial well-being.“The programme offers affordable cultural exchange and safari tours in conservancies, which also includes Green arts creation an initiative that focuses on promoting upcycled furniture, upcycled interior deco for homes, events and lodging,” Ndembere concludes.

!Am Ho!â, a savoury story

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Republikein 2025-12-17

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!Am Ho!â, a savoury story

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Republikein 2025-12-17

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