After realising that there was a need to impact young golfers in Africa looking for a breakthrough in golf, a 29-year-old Motswana lady Ouname Mhotsha started a project dubbed Thanya Monana.
Through the project, Mhotsha who is a Professional Golfer based at Cedar Crest Golf Course in Dallas, Texas, US, wants to impact young golfers from Africa. This will also cater to those who lack information on the available opportunities within the sport.
The project was fully established in February 2023, but before its establishment, Mhotsha had in 2021 hosted a mentorship program that was aimed at assisting young African golfers including Batswana to learn how to utilise their golf talent to access academic and professional development opportunities.
In an interview, Mhotsha said the project initially started as an idea to give back to the younger generation of golfers in Botswana and Africa. She said that through the project she intends to leverage learnt lessons and experiences from her journey to assist other young golfers while also empowering them to assist those that will come after them. She said this would create a ripple effect that can put African golfers in a better position to leverage the opportunities within the sport of golf.
Another objective was to raise awareness about business and career development opportunities for young people who are non-golfers and entrepreneurs so they too can contribute towards the growth of golf in their countries.
“Additionally, we want to contribute to youth development and reduce youth unemployment by creating opportunities for young people to collaborate and leverage business relationships in the golf industry through our events such as the Ouname Mhotsha Fundraising Golf Day coming up on August 22, 2024,” she said.
Taking Times Sport on her journey in golf, Mhotsha noted that she started playing golf at the tender age of seven, and luckily, she comes from a golfing family so having access to the sport was not a struggle. However, she said that it was challenging to advance in the sport because there were no structures in place to accelerate her journey. Mhotsha had to find career advancement opportunities and that meant her golf journey took longer than the average journey to reap full benefits from the sport in terms of financial gain and sports performance.
Mhotsha has further indicated that the participation of young women in the sport of golf in Botswana has grown over the past 5-10 years. She said that they have seen more young girls take up the sport with great support from their parents and national sports governing bodies.
“We recently had our first junior girls’ national team compete in an All Africa tournament, which is a good sign that we are heading in the right direction. We have also seen an increase in new lady golfers who use the sport for leisure and business networking. I believe we are making progress but more still needs to be done to attract more young girls and more women as well as to retain the current crop of girls and women that have taken interest in the sport,” she said.
She has revealed that they are currently receiving support from the International Olympics Committee Young Leaders Program through seed funding and skills development to enable them to execute impactful and sustainable projects.
“The Thanya Monana Project is an initiative under the Ouname Mhotshwa Foundation and the inspiration to move from a small mentorship project to include other parts of the project is to leave a legacy and to show appreciation to a sport that has given me so much throughout my lifetime,” she said.
