Abstract:
Dikembe Mutombo is a retired Congolese American professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the NBA. He was the oldest player in the NBA at the time of his most recent season.
A well-known humanitarian, Mutombo started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. His efforts earned him the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 2001 and 2009. For his feats, The Sporting News named him as one of the “”Good Guys in Sports”” , he was elected as one of 20 winners of the President’s Service Awards, the nation’s highest honor for volunteer service.
In 1997, Mutombo with the Mutombo Foundation began plans to open a $29 million, 300-bed hospital on the outskirts of his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. The project has been on the whole very well received at all social and economic levels in Kinshasa.
He serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, which is a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.
Causes Supported:
Family & Communities, Health & Medicine, Poverty, Education
Source of Information:
Dikembe Mutombo Foundation
Photo Credit: United Nations
