Paheja Siririka
WINDHOEK - The Night of Inspiration in its 5th term had the National Theatre of Namibia packed to capacity as the audience truly waited to be inspired.
The theme of the evening was “Transforming into Significance”. Founder of The Night of Inspiration Sam Shivute said he has always been passionate about inspiring people, positivity, encouraging and seeing them grow. Having hosted different speakers, Shivute said the idea is to create a platform for Namibians to share their stories. “Everyone has a story to tell and someone has to hear these stories,” he said. “We have to make time and listen to one another,” he emphasised.
What made Saturday’s show more special according to Shivute is this is their 5th anniversary, “from the first event, we have been having sold out shows including this one, despite the fact that there was the founding president’s birthday party at Etunda. Today we also launched our book, an anthology of Namibian inspirational stories called Transforming in Significance,” he accentuated.
“What makes today special is that we promised a special guest who happened to be the president of the country-when you have such a person in your company, it becomes an auspicious occasion,” he pointed out.
At the show, one could notice sign language interpreter Selma Moses translating for the hearing impaired, which is something that stood out. “Every time we host the night of inspiration, we have people from the Namibian National Disability of the hearing-impaired, Namibia Federation for the Visually-Impaired, the San (Bushman) people, as well as kids who are attending schools like the Havana Project School and other underprivileged communities,” said Shivute. “All we want is to spread the message of positivity,” he stated.
President Hage Geingob was impressed with the speakers of the night, “I am shocked that Namibians have these types of conversations about transforming one another, all I hear are problems-where have you guys been that are having these nice uplifting conversations,” he said. Geingob noted that the majority of attendees were female, “look at the girls, Where are the boys, you go to church, it’s about 80 percent young girls and the boys are nowhere to be seen. Go to graduation, a higher percentage is girls, what are the boys doing, what are the men doing now-women are getting educated, they are earning better salaries and all of a sudden boys are hating-frustration aggression, kill them, beat them up. So we must form men’s clubs,” he said, suggesting men in Namibia need an intervention.
On why people should be part of the Night of Inspiration, with many motivational speakers, seminars and YouTube to get that information for free, Shivute said the evidence of the impact of the night of inspiration, “The first speaker of the evening Sara Shatumbu, came here five years ago as a student and decided to volunteer for the night of inspiration and today she is here telling her story on how she transformed from who she was to who she is, that’s just one example, ” he said.
“Paul-William Shipanga initially performed here and after that, he has established a foundation which is making a difference in our society,” he added.
Shivute said people who say motivational talks don’t help don’t know what they are missing because he is a living testimony of how those talks transformed him.