Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitator Following Visit in June

Key person:       Charles Chibale Chola

Recent Events

Skills Training Centre

The Skills Centre still has courses being run for bricklaying and carpentry, with six students being trained this year. This is even after the funding was cut last year, but they decided to just keep going. (Photo shows bricklayers learning how to make an internal cross section)

They have also been using the carpentry course for making goods to order if someone comes and pays for the materials. (Photo below shows the carpentry tutor, Albert Mwanza, and the students on a four seater desk constructed for trainings)

The preschool is still going very well with parents paying for the children to get a step up in literacy. Currently there are over 30 children on the program. They want to split the class up into 4 and 5 year olds and the 6 to 7 year olds to be able to be more focused on children’s requirements. The courses run from 7am to 10am.

Adult literacy classes are being run with 16 people registering although not all of them turn up regularly. The oldest man who turns up is 56 years old. One man has learnt to read the Bible and comes to Charles' home to read it. He is now on the leadership of a local church.

The after school program for pupils is also going well in patches. They were getting up to 45 children each day but this has now dropped to 15 per day as the school has started sports programs after school. 

Bike Shop

The bike shop continues to thrive in the community with 10 to 20 customers coming every day. This is the main source of funds for the Skills Centre. 

Farming

The Skills Centre has been helping the government with some new cassava variety trials. Some have been growing well while others not, but there is a lot of good information coming out of the trials.

There are still only a few people who are faithfully doing Foundations for Farming with maize. Albert Mwansa, the carpentry teacher, says it has been a hard season for farming with very inconsistent rains. He expects to get 9 bags from ½ lima which is about 3 tons per hectare equivalent, but this is obviously much better than any other crops in the area.

The farm purchased by Charles has now been gifted to the partnership and Presley Mwanza continues to be the farm manager (photo shows him with a mulaina tree). They have planted some vegetables this year but the land is showing signs of being potassium deficient. They are using mulch and compost and will continue the battle to restore the land. A crop of soya beans was grown which is currently drying and will be threshed and winnowed soon.

The broiler chickens for the partnership are still going, with the community buying at 35 kwacha (US$4.50).

The mulaina trees planted two years ago have grown well. These should be mature in about 10 years, ready for harvest to provide timber for the Skills Centre. They have just completed pruning the lower branches to ensure the timber grows straight.

Health Clinic

The community is still trying to get a clinic up and running because the nearest one currently is 15 km away. At present Kaishe Skills Centre has a small amount of funds to purchase some “small medicines” to help people in the community.

There are 11 villages in the community who have committed to making 1,500 bricks each for the project. Each village has been set a certain date and come to mould the bricks, then when completed they will fire them. Kaishe Skills Centre has agreed to provide funds for the cement and iron sheets, and the labour from the students as a practical to complete the bricklaying and build the roof. 

Charles is still busy talking to the government about getting a clinical officer to come and set this up as an outpost. 

SILCs (Saving Internally Lending Community) 

This program has been started by the Skills Centre as a result of seeing a table loan program in another area of Zambia. There has been four of these programs started in Kaishe. 
• 25 members are selected
• They contribute 20 kwacha (US$3) each per month
• The funds are loaned out to a selected member and have to be paid back within two months, with 20% interest
• The following month someone else is selected for the money to be loaned to
• At the end of the year, the excess funds created from the interest are paid out to members and the process starts again.

In the first year of working, some of the groups have doubled the funds in the box. The photo shows Charles with a SILC box which is empty as all the funds are out on loan earning interest.

Personal Stories

Christopher Chanda

Christopher is 32 years old, married with four children. The first born is 8 years old and is in Grade 2. The last born is currently attending the Kaishe Skills Centre preschool.

Christopher was trained at the Skills Centre in carpentry in 2009/2010. The course taught him lots of things but the main skills were for making doors, beds and roofs for houses. After the course he started working on projects that the community ordered from him. The first was a bed, for which he used his own tools he had managed to buy - a plane, saw, chisel and brace. The things he didn’t have he was able to borrow from the Skills Centre. When he sold the bed he had enough to buy some more tools.

He really enjoyed the course and it has certainly helped his living situation.

He now focuses on farming in the rainy season and carpentry in the dry season, mainly putting roofs on people’s houses.

He thinks his farming yields will be ok this year. He planted 2.75 lima (50x50m) of maize and cassava. He was trying to follow the Foundation for Farming methods.

Ideas for the Future

Church Extension Program (via Samfya Bible School)

Samfya Bible School has been running a leadership extension program in others areas around the District. Kaishe is investigating the possibility of having this program in their village.

The program is run by having the leaders of a group of churches meet one day a month for two years to teach them from the Bible. It is a very real need in the local rural churches for the leadership to grasp the realities of the gospel that can then be passed onto members. Often much of the teaching in the local rural churches is not biblically based, which has been causing many issues for members in the community.

We see this as a key issue in helping development in the area, as people are first transformed by the gospel through biblical discipleship.

There is a request to fund the program and Kaishe Skills Centre and Samfya Bible School are working on the proposal at present.

Foundations for Farming Training

We are keen to send three people from Kaishe to Chengelo School for Foundations for Farming training, including Presley the farm manager who has not been to one of these basic trainings.

Comments

The budget is to remain the same at this stage but I will keep tabs on the health clinic proposal re funding cement and iron sheets.

The church leadership extension program for other areas has cost US$7,000 for the total two years but for Kaishe this may be less as the main cost is transport and Kaishe is not that far away from Samfya.