Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitators Following Visit

Key people:   
Barnabus Mwela - Coordinator
Titus Mambwe - Trustee
Phyllis

Recent Events

Education Program

At present there are 25 orphans being helped with education requirements (out of 180 on the register), 12 in secondary school and 13 in primary school. They are being helped mainly with school fees. When the children are visited CORAC also uses some funds to help supply uniforms, bags and shoes where they are needed. Phyllis is the one who looks after all the education requirements for the children.

The children are doing well at school and are still being visited at least twice per year by CORAC. They also get the orphans together for an encouragement session once per year.

They have decided to help out two orphans with higher education on a loan basis. Once the orphans pass their course and get jobs they will have to start paying back the loan within two years. Moses is completing a two year course this year and has been supported about 80% of his fees totalling ZMK18,000 (US$1,800). Amose obtained a bursary from the government to fund his university fees but still needed funds for accommodation and food while studying. CORAC have agreed to fund him ZMK6,000 per year to help with this. 

Skills Training

CORAC have started to put up a small structure at Barnabus' house so they can restart the skills training that stopped a few years back. They still need to construct a floor slab and an office and storeroom. They are wanting to restart because of the testimony from some of the ex-students from the previous skills centre who are doing very well with businesses from the skills they learnt. (See report from last year on Edina the knitter)

Differences from the last skills centre:
- Students will be asked to pay up front before they can attend the courses. These fees will only cover part of the cost and what is produced from the training will help to top it up.

- Courses will be for three months only and for just two hours a day from Monday to Friday so people from the community can manage to attend.

- There will be no rent to pay as the landlord is Barnabus and he doesn’t want anything.

- The teaching will start with Barnabus and Edina who have offered their services to start with.

They aim to keep working on the building as funds permit and will start the courses when the building is finished. They estimated a bill of ZMK13,000 (US$1,300) but that was six months ago so it may have risen.  

Farming

Barnabus and his younger brother and wife (Kelvin and Florence) went for further training in Foundations for Farming (FfF) at Mukishi in 2015. The plan is for Kelvin and Florence to start helping more in CORAC and to take some of the farming program responsibilities from Barnabus.

Barnabus also visited the Patience Child Care partnership (ZAM17) to discuss how they have been training people in the community. They got some ideas around having smaller sized plots of 12.5m by 12.5m for people to start on.

Florence said that the new farming methods showed a much better sized cob (see photo comparing them!)

The farming program this year was affected by rains that were not so good. CORAC is still running two programs. One is a micro-loan program for farming inputs but the beneficiaries are using traditional methods of farming. The other is the FfF program where people are trained and just do the methods themselves. Because of mulch the lack of rain didn’t affect the FfF farming as much as the traditional methods.

We encouraged them to use the micro-loan program in conjunction with FfF by only loaning to those who show some faithfulness in preparing their field.

They did a demo plot themselves at the CORAC farm to try the methods. They planted one lima (50m x 50m) and the yield was 24 bags (just under 5 ton per hectare equivalent). In fact the yield would have been better but some green maize blew over and they ate a lot of green maize.

They are wanting to plant legumes this year as a crop rotation and also so they can use the product in making chicken feed (see below).

Chicken Run

Behind Barnabus' house is a chicken run that CORAC has funded to help generate more income to top up the orphan college loan fund and fund the skills training centre building.

They purchased 40 birds and currently 38 are still alive. They have been getting about 35 eggs per day on average and are currently making a profit of 9 ZMK per day. Since they started the business there has been a couple of setbacks. The price of a 50kg bag of feed increased from 124 ZMK to 230 ZMK at its peak and the price of a tray of eggs to sell dropped from 29 ZMK to 24 ZMK as a large company from Lusaka started to dump its eggs on the market.

However they are still making a profit and people like the quality of the eggs. They have no problem selling the eggs each day. They are looking into making their own feed to reduce the costs and increase profit.

Barnabus has kept impeccable records of the chicken run. 

Partnership's Influence within the Community

When people saw the demo plot of maize growing at the CORAC farm they were very surprised and wanted to know what had happened there. They are wanting to learn this new way of farming.

Ideas for the Future

Keen to look at the potential to provide some micro-loan funds into the education program for a period of two years to get the first pupils through. As these students repay their loan it will provide a way for them to have funds available if more students are exceptional.

Prayer and Praise Points

1) Praise for Kelvin and Florence desiring to join the partnership and help out
2) Pray for the farming to start expanding now there are more people getting involved

Comments

We are enjoying the direction that the partnership is taking and can tell they are working well together and are working through how they can continue to be a help in their community.