Hero #094: Dikembe Mutombo … (03/01/16)
Born June of 1966, Mutombo is a Congolese American retired NBA professional basketball player. Now retired from professional sports, he has become even more well known for his humanitarian work.
As a 7 ft 2 in, 260-pound center, Dikembe was one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award a record-tying four times. He was also an eight-time All-Star in his 18 NBA seasons.
Before turning pro, Mutombo had attended Georgetown University on a USAID scholarship, originally intending to become a doctor. After seeing him on campus, however, John Thompson (then the Georgetown men’s basketball coach) recruited Dikembe to play basketball. Though he was raised multilingual (speaking French, Spanish, Portuguese, Tshiluba, Swahili, Lingala and two other Central African dialects), Mutombo spoke almost no English when he arrived at Georgetown. And yet he was a quick study, and — after persevering in Georgetown’s ESL program — he eventually became proficient in the English language, and graduated in 1991 with bachelor’s degrees in both linguistics and diplomacy.
In 1997, while playing and starring for the Atlanta Hawks, Dikembe started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation — an organization designed to help improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. One of his first projects (and the one of which he is to this day most proud) was the completion of the 300-bed Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital (named for his mother, who died of a stroke in 1997) on the outskirts of his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Despite a series of construction delays, bureaucratic snafus and difficulties in finding sponsorship (Dikembe ended up funding over half of the $29 million project himself), the hospital was completed in August of 2006, and has been serving the Congolese citizenry ever since.
On April 13, 2011, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health awarded Dikembe Mutombo the Goodermote Humanitarian Award “for his efforts to reduce polio globally as well as his work improving the health of neglected and under-served populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Michael J. Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said “Mr. Mutombo is a winner in many ways—both on the court and as a humanitarian. His work has improved the health of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital and Research Center is a model for the region.”
In 2012, the Mutombo Foundation, in partnership with Mutombo’s alma mater, Georgetown University, began a new initiative which now aims to provide care for visually impaired children from low-income families in the Washington, D.C. area.
Mutombo is also a longtime supporter of Special Olympics and is currently a member of the Special Olympics International Board of Directors, as well as one of the organization’s Global Ambassadors.
“After spending more than 17 years playing for the NBA, in the summertime, I always came back to community service … God put us here to prepare this place for the next generation. That’s our job. Raising children and helping the community, that’s preparing for the next generation.” ~ Dikembe Mutombo
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