From Friendship to Forever: A MATTER Love Story
There is something special about celebrating the people who help bring MATTER’s mission to life.
Today, we’re celebrating two members of our MATTER Africa team as they begin a new chapter together! Faith, a Lead TEAL+ Facilitator, and Roddy, a Network and Device Administrator, started as friends years ago. Friendship grew into a relationship as their journey took them from friends to colleagues, then partners, and now husband and wife.
For the couple, the joy of their wedding was found in the people surrounding them. Two families coming together as one. Friends and colleagues celebrating alongside them. And heartfelt speeches that honored their lives and the journeys they had walked. Those words became some of their most treasured memories of the day.
Join us in congratulating Faith and Roddy as they build their next chapter together!
Learnmore Jonasi Plants Chaya Gardens
A comedian AND a badza professional!
During a visit to his home country of Zimbabwe, Learnmore Jonasi stopped in his hometown of Chimanimani to perform the town’s first-ever comedy show and to give back to his community. While there, Learnmore planted the first of several chaya gardens he’s helping bring to local schools, which will support school feeding programs in the area.
Thank you, Learnmore, for giving back to your community while filling the world with laughter!
MATTERbox In Motion
If your company cares about the communities where you live and work, one of the most meaningful ways to show it is by giving back.
The Edina Morningside Rotary Club, C&H Technology, and Eagle Rock Bank recently brought their teams together for MATTERbox packing events—creating stronger connections while making a difference in their communities.
Thank you for turning your commitment to community into action!
Basa Fund: Meet Simba Mhungu
We’re excited to introduce you to Simba, founder of PeakPoint Services and one of the Basa Fund recipients.
Years ago, Simba was an analyst at Goldman Sachs, sitting at the back of a room while one senior partner after another talked about where the world’s growth would come from. Not one of them mentioned Africa. He calls what he felt that day a “holy anger,” and it eventually led him to leave Wall Street and go home to Zimbabwe.
He started small, helping sugarcane farmers on his family’s farm switch to irrigation systems that used less water. That work led to turning around struggling businesses, then to advising KFC’s parent company as it expanded across Africa, and eventually to running the country’s largest agricultural bank, where he served more than 55,000 farmers. Along the way, he realized he could do more for his community as an entrepreneur than from inside a large institution.
Inspired by speakers at the 2024 Business as Mission Summit, the idea for PeakPoint Services was born. Zimbabwe produces excellent graduates in medicine and the health sciences, and many of them struggle to find work. Meanwhile, AI companies around the world need skilled people to read and label medical images. Simba brought the two together. Today PeakPoint employs over 60 people, most of them medical and science students, who annotate MRI, CT, and ultrasound images for companies around the world. The team is also building its own AI model trained on African disease profiles, which is a first. One surprising thing they’ve learned along the way is that musicians often make the best annotators.
For Simba, the Basa Fund investment means more than money in the bank. “We talk about the triple bottom line or just your return,” he says. “But my goodness, this return is beyond just jobs. It’s affecting a lot of people on the ground. It’s putting food on the table, very basic. It’s enabling innovation and growth.” Just as important, he says, it takes some of the risk out of building something new, so his team can focus on the future and the industries still to come. In his words, “It gives us the latitude and flexibility to dream.”
By 2050, one in four people on Earth will live in Africa. Simba is already building for that future.