Zimbabwe, Africa
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Report Date: February 23, 2017
Peniel Centre staff members, volunteers and children would like to hereby appreciate Bright Hope World for their partnership in brightening the future of abandoned, abused and homeless orphans and vulnerable children in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Peniel Centre is so much indebted to Bright Hope World for all the support that is being rendered to the centre. Through the support from Bright Hope World, the children of Peniel Centre have been able to live well and go to school like all other children in the society. Peniel Centre had 26 children in 2016 and now has 24 children after others became adults and were released from the centre. Please find herein below a brief description of what happened at Peniel Centre in 2016 and how the support from Bright Hope made it possible for that to happen.
Education
Education is one of the powerful weapons that Peniel Centre is providing to these children so that they will be able to break the cycle of poverty. Thank you so much Bright Hope World for making this a reality to the children at Peniel Centre. All the children are in school and are doing very well. In 2016, seven children from Peniel Centre undertook skills training, while 16 were in high school and three were in primary school. This year 2017 Peniel Centre has three children who are going to primary school, 17 at high school, one at university (pictured) and three on skills training.
Skills Training
One of the best ways in creating a future for these children is to provide them with skills that will help them to earn a living after Peniel Centre. In 2016, five girls did Hotel and Catering management training and finished their training very well in December of the same year. One of the Peniel boys did Agriculture studies while another one graduated with a certificate in Business Management as well as a certificate in Motor Mechanics. One of the girls is already employed in South Africa and is starting a new life on her own outside Peniel Centre while one of the boys is also employed in Bulawayo town by one of the businessmen who own a fleet of mini-buses. We are so much grateful to Bright Hope World and also the business community in Bulawayo who agreed to mentor or to give opportunities to our Peniel children to practice their skills in their businesses.
Our desire is to give these children skills so that they can use them to earn a living after Peniel Centre. We still have three who are on skills training this year 2017, one is doing agriculture while another boy is doing building and they are practicing their skills at Peniel Centre. The girl who is advancing her catering skills would like to open a restaurant of her own and become a businesswoman in Zimbabwe and beyond. Please find herein photos of the Peniel children who graduated in 2016 (girls pictured with Jennifer).
Sustainable Projects
The greatest desire of Peniel Centre is to run various self-sustainable projects so that the centre is able to produce its own food, milk, meat etc. Some of the self-sustainable projects that are being run by Peniel Centre are as follows:
a) Garden Project
We now have two gardens at Peniel Centre, one is to produce green veggies for the centre while the other one is to produce vegetables for the market as well as being an agricultural training field for our children. Both gardens rely on water from our two boreholes and due to the drought in 2016 one of the boreholes was not producing much water thereby causing us to reduce the size of land with crops. However we are very much grateful to report that our children were the first people in the country to eat green mealies from this garden. Apart from the green mealies, we also managed to harvest some green vegetables some of which we sold to the market and the rest we used as relish for the children at the centre.
We had grown butternut but due to the large amount of rainfall we received in January, the whole crop of butternut is rotting. The fruit that is being produced is going bad before ripe unfortunately and this is leading us to lose the whole crop. Apart from the butternut we have also grown maize for the second time but unfortunately army worm has become a problem to the crop. We are working on removing the butternut for it is completely a write off and will try to grow another crop. We will leave the maize crop like that while we continue to fight the army worm and are quite sure that we will win the battle although the yield is going to be reduced.
We are working on extending the second garden so that we will be able to supply the market regularly. We are quite sure that our two boreholes will manage to run the two gardens and produce the food that we need for the centre.
b) Livestock project 
Peniel Centre has got 13 cattle and 23 goats which all survived the El Niño induced drought of 2016. The grazing ground at Peniel was like a clear dry soccer field, there was completely no grass for the animals and there were no leaves for the browsers. It was really difficult for our livestock. We thank God that Peniel only lost two cows and four young goats to the drought last year. Since there was no food for the animals as well as water to drink we had to turn to supplementary feeding to help our cows survive the drought.
We thank God that our cows are doing very well now and there is plenty of grass for grazing at the moment. The cows and the goats are going a long way in producing milk and meat for the centre. We no longer buy milk but we produce it ourselves.
Our desire is to increase our cattle herd so that we can have milk for sale and raise up finances to cover other basic necessities for the children.
c) Small livestock production
Peniel has 50 layers chicken project which started in 2016. The layers are producing eggs both for sale and kitchen consumption. Our desire is to increase the number of layers so that we can produce more for the market in town. Apart from layers we would like to resume the broiler project so that we can supply the market with meat. We have just started keeping domestic chickens at Peniel Centre which we will sell also to the market once they have increased.
Psycho-social Support Interventions
One of the greatest effects of the AIDS pandemic is its impact on the psychological and mental health of children who have nursed and lost their parents under traumatic circumstances. The impact of parental death on children is complex and affects the child’s mental health and social energy, and might further result in stunted development of emotional intelligence and life skills. Many of the children we have worked with in Mthombothemba and Makamure areas show psycho-somatic disturbances, depression, very low self-esteem, disturbed social behaviour, hopelessness and low levels of life skills. We have observed that with relatively unsophisticated, direct, culturally and spiritually appropriate psycho-social support interventions for children affected by HIV/AIDS, very encouraging results to improve the resilience and coping capacity of children can be achieved.
Peniel Centre is our psycho-social support intervention centre for children in the centre as well as for children from communities we work with. Children come to spend either a weekend or part of the holiday at Peniel receiving counselling or being helped in so many ways by trained social workers. We ran four psycho-social support camps at Peniel Centre in 2016 reaching out to over 200 orphans and vulnerable children from in and around Bulawayo.
Many of these children received healing and others are being helped by our team who are following up on those who attended the camp. Some of the children are being helped to get treatment from the hospital especially those who are HIV positive. (See the testimony below)
Brighton's birthdate is not really known and it is presumed that he is 15 years old. His parents both succumbed to HIV when this young boy was still very young. The parents died and left him infected with the virus which always makes him to be sickly. After the death of his parents he was moved to live with an uncle who, due to limited resources to feed another mouth, moved him to his other aunt who is not always present at home. This means the boy was literally left out to fend for himself since the aunt would spend weeks and even months away from home.
He came to one of the camps at Peniel Centre and counsel was provided to him. When he came to the camp he was suffering from diarrhoea and this prompted the Peniel team to take him to the hospital as soon as possible. He was taken to the hospital soon after the camp and thank God, he was registered to receive HIV treatment. He is currently on treatment and is healthy like the other children in the community. The PSS camps are going a long way in bringing hope and saving lives, thanks to Bright Hope World for their partnership.
⦠Peniel Centre should have a fund to support those children who have been trained in different skills to start running their own projects or businesses
⦠Work with more local business people who can provide industrial attachment to the children undergoing skills training
⦠Peniel Centre and its partners should have a fund for children from Peniel going to university level
⦠The Centre should consider putting solar in as an alternative source of energy as opposed to buying electricity from the government which is more expensive
⦠Peniel Centre should consider offering skills training to some of the vulnerable out of school children/youth who come for the PSS camps
⦠Consider increasing the number of layers project as well as restarting the broiler project as a way of being self-sustainable
⦠Increase also the number of cows for the cattle project
⦠Consider running a cattle pen feed project as a self-sustainable project for the centre
⦠Increase the size of the garden to produce more for the market
Peniel Centre is very much grateful to Bright Hope World for their partnership.
With much gratitude
Gideon & Jennifer Chishamba
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