One day, a young D.C. middle school student told her math tutor, George Washington University senior public health major Bongani Ndebele, that she didn’t feel like doing math that afternoon. Frankly, that’s probably far from atypical for math tutors to hear.
But the reason why stuck with Ndebele, who was at the school as part of Math Matters at GW program, a collaboration between the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, GW Teach and District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to provide high-impact math tutoring to middle school students in the city.
Why didn’t this student want to do math during that session? She was hungry. Her family’s food supply was relatively scarce.
His experiences serving in education and working with children such as that particular student have inspired him to address those types of disparities and improve health outcomes on a community level.
“In public health, I want to focus on youth and mental health, and I believe you can’t do the work I want to do without serving first,” Ndebele said. “From the beginning, I knew I wanted to work with youth, but I didn’t want to do so without understanding their daily struggles.”
Service has long been engrained in Ndebele, who lived in Zimbabwe until middle school before he and his immediate family moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland.
“In Zimbabwe, we have a very community-oriented culture, where helping others is a priority,” he said. “Growing up, I was always involved in service, whether in school or through family expectations.”
He admits that he didn’t always enjoy it at the time, but as he got older, he saw the importance of building community and how it can hold a place together. One of the most jarring cultural differences when he moved to the United States, he said, was the strong focus on individualism and individual success. While he understands what he calls “the grind and hustle” of the United States, Ndebele felt he missed the collective care that was emphasized back in Zimbabwe.
So, when he arrived at GW, he sought ways to find that again, and he did so through the Nashman Center. His involvement within it has shaped his passions and future path to helping others.
“I don’t think I’d be the same person without the service experiences I’ve had,” Ndebele said. “Here at the Nashman Center, I feel valued as both an individual and as a part of a larger community.”
Ndebele has been a part of other Nashman Center programming besides Math Matters at GW. He started with SMARTDC, where he tutored reading literacy to a pair of elementary school students. He then served two straight summers in the Civic Changemakers program, a five-week project helping D.C. middle school students in Wards 7 and 8 create service projects on issues they were concerned about in their communities.
The first summer was in 2023, when smog from the Canadian wildfires was affecting air quality in D.C. His students chose air pollution as their focus, and being a public health major, Ndebele provided them with scientific information for their awareness campaign. They handed out masks, made posters and gave presentations on the air quality index and vulnerable populations.
“It was one of the most fun things I’ve done in college,” he said.
During the second summer, his students’ focus was on drug abuse and overdose. Ndebele provided them broader D.C.-wide statistics, connected them to resources and arranged interviews with drug abuse and suicide prevention experts. Ultimately, they created an infographic on how to use Narcan, an overdose medication administered as a nasal spray, and shared the guide with fellow students.
These experiences have taught Ndebele to serve where he’s needed, and he took great pride in being a mentor to some of these students who faced systemic barriers similar to those he encountered in education and representation.
Ndebele will be staying at GW next year to pursue a master’s in public health. He is simultaneously working on his project as part of the prestigious Transform Mid-Atlantic Civic Fellowship he earned last spring.
He looks forward to continuing his work in youth public health and firmly believes the best way to make meaningful, lasting change is to be fully absorbed in the communities themselves.
“I believe the most important reason to serve—whether in public health, political science, or public policy—is to ensure that the people affected by the issues you're working on have a leading role in shaping the change,” Ndebele said. “True insight and empathy come from direct involvement and service.”
GW Serves is a series featuring students who are living out the university’s mission to build up public service leaders and active citizens to create a better world for all.
