•Nancy Chilufya Lutaba Chanda (right) with First Republican President Dr Kenneth Kaunda

By JULIUS PHIRI –
AT 23, Nancy Chilufya Lutaba Chanda is already station manager for Lusaka based Life Television (TV)a dream which she never fathomed.
At Life TV which began in 2016, her responsibility from March this year was to play the role of the overall of managing the affairs of the TV station developing and programming and managing the station budget among others.
She is also in charge of firing and hiring ,promotions, taking care of sales and
Marketing, planning and delegating duties to office staff, project evaluation and ensuring that the station is operating in compliance with the requirements of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) regulations.
A holder of a certificate in Journalism and Public Relations from the Zambia Institute of Mass Communication (ZAMCOM)Nancy finds passion in what she does .
“I wanted to study pharmacy when I completed my high school but then i couldn’t afford to pay for that course .Hence i had to settle for media practise as a second option to pick another passion. So one of my kind relatives managed to pay for my college fees and thats how come i ended up studying journalism and public relations at ZAMCOM,”she said.
She recounted that her elevation from internship to station manager for Life TV within a short period of time could only be attributed to none other than determination and hard-work.
“I am the station manager for Life TV at only 243years old. Through determination and hard-work, I have managed to climb up the corporate ladder in just three years of starting work as an intern at the television station,” she said.
Miss Chanda who is the founder and chief executive officer for Nancy Chanda’s Dream-Chaser initiated the works with less privileged children in order to equip them with skills and knowledge to chase and accomplish their dreams.
The intention for the initiative was to facilitate the process of skills and talent management through mentorship, work placements for young ones so that they get job on training experience.
Miss Chanda has a strong, passion at her mentorship work that she does and is equally up to the task .She started theinitiative in 2016 of Dream-Chaser when she identified the young children in her community.
“In 2016 I founded Nancy Chanda’s Dream-Chaser, a movement aimed to creating a safe and friendly environment that enables the vulnerable and the non-vulnerable youths to discover themselves and be guided as they find their way through life. Dream-Chaser creates an environment in which young people encourage each other through sharing their experiences, mentorship and supporting one another’s interests,”she said.
Miss Chanda said the movement of Dream-Chaser was fully running up-to now and currently has 35 active members.
She said her dream was to create an environment for the children to flourish under the guidance of teachers and industry professionals who could share knowledge and skills.
She explained that her initiative is an incubator for ideas which aims to impact the lives of children in the community as well as empowering them to live significantly.
Miss Chanda’s vision does not only stop at becoming the largest non-profit making
Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in Zambia but rather to grow it in order to become an internationally acclaimed NGO whose impact would touch many lives by inspiring and connecting global dreamers.
She believes that exposing these children to the opportunities that live beyond their current communities would encourage them to dream big and not to be limited by their current situations.
Miss Chanda wants to provide a space to instill confidence into the children as they have to believe in themselves and inspire them to do the seemingly impossible things in life.
She said the next step in achieving her dream was finding and acquiring places to provide multiple facilities to cater for many more children.
She also aims to find the right people who have the skills to grow the initiative further and help assist in creating programmes to keep the children continually engaged and growing.
Miss Chanda’s Dream-Chaser has a creative and entrepreneurial back-ground with real-life experience into what the children were facing.
She was purposed to impact her community in this way and lead a generation beyond their current circumstances into their envisioned futures.
Amid the out-break of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Dream-Chaser was currently hosting weekly
mentorship Webinars on Zoom to ensure that the kids that make up the membership still remains engaged and connected to the right mentors to help them continue to grow their skills and develop their thinking capabilities.
Miss Chanda was born on November11 th, 1996 and started school at Mpezeni park primary school in Chipata from where she did grade one to four from 2003 to 2006.
Thereafter, the Dream-Chaser further went to pursue her primary education at Kanjala primary school from grade five to grades seven from 2007 to 2009 where she was involved in extra-curricular activities such as the AIDS club and science clubs.She became a leader by being appointed as a prefect.
She did her grade eight and nine at Hillside Girls Secondary School from 2010 to 2011 where she obtained her junior secondary school certificate.
Miss Chanda was also involved in other extra-curricular activities such as jets and debate.
She continued her journey in pursuing her academics from 2012 to 2014, she did her grade 10, 11 and 12 at Hillside Girls Secondary School.
Whilst at the school she was vice head-girl, vice president for Jets, publicity secretary for Jets adding that her extra-curricular activities included Jets club, table tennis and debate.
Upon completion of her secondary school where she obtained general certificate, Miss Chanda in 2016 attended a one year certificate course in journalism and public relations at ZAMCOM.
In July last year, she pursued another course and obtained a certificate in corporate and project management with the Allison Online Courses.
Miss Chanda did a three months internship from January to March 2017 with the Great North Road Academy.
She was attached to the media department where her main responsibility was writing motivational articles for the school page, social media posting, data entry, customer relations as well as being in charge of press and Jets club.
From March 2017 to November 2018, she became production assistant at Fortress Media adding that her responsibilities were to maintain the production calendar and expenses to be paid worksheet assist with the creation, distribution and management of production related contracts.
Miss Chanda was also involved in research potential venues and maintains a venue database routine office production related duties including assisting with telephones , filling and distributing paper work, data entry library filling research, arranging meals, processing receipts, photocopying, assist with the creation of schedules and budgets and distributing production paper work, social media management and content production among other duties.
At Fortress Media, she also became account executive from November 2018 to March 2020.
The responsibilities of Miss Chanda was to provide support for clients by learning and satisfying their needs making cold calls to prospects presenting and demonstrating the value of products and services to prospects building long lasting mutually beneficial relationships with external contacts and internal departments for them to create a better customer experience .She was also in charge of handling complaints and negotiations coming up with creative ideas to sale a brand and products proof reading work and handle content development for clients research on trends.