How living all over the world has brought Hope Hotel Ministries' Oliver Quambusch to the #4Leaders4Change movement
The old Nguni adage 'ukuhamba kukubona' - to travel is to see and understand how people live - is the perfect way to describe the motivation behind German-born Oliver Quambusch's Hope Hotel Ministries and how it fits into The Sun International CEO SleepOut™'s movement to eradicate homelessness through education.
Having lived in France, Hong Kong, Russia and London before moving to South Africa some years ago, German-born Oliver Quambusch is deeply passionate about helping people, particularly in areas related to vulnerability.
Starting off with founding children's homes from 2008 under the Hope Hotel Ministries banner, Oliver unpacks the programmes the organisation he is Director of is involved in: "We concentrate on 3 key areas: children in need, mothers in crisis pregnancy situations and social entrepreneurship. We set up in 2008 two children’s homes in Melville - adoption homes - and we’ve just received our 52nd child into our home. 42 children out of our homes have been adopted into South African families or abroad, but in terms of interventions, our largest intervention is in the township of Alexandra, where we work across 5 high schools - we have pregnant learners make wise decisions around their pregnancy so that late-stage abortions or abandonments shortly after birth aren’t happening.”
What philosophy drives Oliver as Founder and Director of Hope Hotel Ministries?: “I’ve always believed that we all LEARN, we EARN and then we RETURN what we have learnt and I see it now at the age of 53 and for the last 3 years, I have been at that third stage of my life of returning my knowledge and also my finances.”
Oliver has followed his own philosophy ‘militantly’; after a short holiday in South Africa he gave up a highly successful career in fashion marketing in London in order to set up Hotel Hope Ministries in Johannesburg in 2008. Oliver also has two sons, Thapelo (15) and Innocent (10) whom he loves and with whom he is well pleased.
Want to know who Oliver has called on to take up the #4Leaders4Change challenge? None other than the Director of Proof Communication, Jonathon Rees!