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Zimbabwe, Africa

ZIM02c - Fountain of Hope - Makamure Community Development

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Report Date: February 27, 2018

Report Following Evaluation Meetings with Community Leaders and Pastors

 

Fountain of Hope staff would like to hereby appreciate Bright Hope World for the support that is being rendered to different communities and villages where FHF is making an impact. Many lives are being touched and many souls are coming to Christ, even those on leadership of communities. The projects that are run in these communities are not only transforming the socio-economic situations of communities but are undoubtedly bringing many to Christ. For instance, recently in Chivi the council CEO, who had seen Fountain of Hope touching the lives of orphans and vulnerable children, decided to give up worshipping other gods and turned to the true living God. This is because he had seen these projects improving the lives of people and changing the behaviours of young and old people especially in the community of Makamure. The community of Chirogwe which used not to be enthusiastic about transformation of their community has amazingly joined other communities in running the race of defining their future. It is because of the transformation taking place in these communities that has caused people like the CEO of Chivi to want to worship this God of transformation.

Fountain of Hope staff members have been working hard since the end of September to the beginning of the year 2018 especially in the area of training people to practice Foundations for Farming. Most of these farmers are very convinced that this is one of the best ways of practicing farming such that they are going into villages recruiting other people to follow suit. Fountain of Hope staff members did not even rest during the Christmas break as they wanted people to get as much as possible from the training they had on Foundations for Farming.

Towards the end of December/beginning of January Fountain of Hope had an evaluation process with the communities to find out how the projects have been having an impact in the lives of people. Please find herein below the evaluation summary report for Makamure community :

 

Makamure

Fountain of Hope and the community leaders of this community met on the 27th December 2017 to evaluate the work that has been done so far in the community. The leaders were so grateful to Fountain of Hope and Bright Hope World for the work that has been done so far. There are already great changes that are taking place in the community. The quality of life is improving in this community of 37 villages, although they are not yet at the place where they want to be. Please find below what has been done so far in the community of Makamure and what the challenges and recommendations are :

 

Foundations for Farming

85 families were trained in October and November 2017 and they were also equipped with maize seed to grow in their fields. This is the place where even the chief of the area was also trained and equipped with seed to grow maize in his field. He has also made land available which will be used in the future as a demonstration plot and the produce from the land will be used to feed widows and orphans in the community.

Impact 
The impact of it was narrated briefly by the assistant chief of the area, Headman Madzivire, who practices Foundations for Farming with his family.

"On behalf of my community I would like to hereby appreciate the people who brought this new way of farming into my area. Thank you for opening up our eyes. We have been blind for a long time and we detroyed our land through our blindness. My land has been unfit for farming because the soil is poor and very much unfertile.

Thank you so much Bright Hope World that you have made us to realise that we need to conserve our soil and enrich it. Even though some of us do not have cows which give us manure to enrich our soil, we have already started getting humus from the mountains to add to soil. We did not know anything to do with mulching and thank God that we now know how to put grass onto our land as a mulch. Some of us are even going ahead to build mulch storage shades as a way of showing you that we are committed to this new technology. We are embracing it with our two hands because we don’t want hunger anymore in our community

I am so much grateful to you because last season after learning the new technology and applying it in our field we were able to harvest much from our fields. We did not only harvest the maize that you gave us but we practiced this type of farming on groundnuts and roundnuts which you told us that we should rotate with maize and we harvested much and were even able to sell some of our produce to the market as far away as Bulawayo. My church managed to gather 30 bags of maize and we were able to give those bags of maize to orphans and widows in our church. This type of farming has helped us to be able to preach Christ not with the mouth but with our deeds. You will find out that all the people of my community want to be part of this program. Thank you once more, Tinotenda for the training and assistance."

Foundations for Farming is undoubtedly having a great impact in this community as is shown by the number of people who still want to be trained. The people of this community now know how to practice crop rotation to enhance their soil fertility and to destroy crop diseases.

Challenges
The greatest challenge is the erratic rains that this community receives on an annual basis. It is also difficult to get mulch since there is not much grass in the community. Their fields are not fenced so during the dry season cows eat up all their mulch leaving them without again.

Recommendations
-  More boreholes should be sunk and dams built for the community to practice irrigation farming since the area always receives below normal rainfall
- Fountain of Hope and Bright Hope World should increase the number of farmers in the next farming season because the whole community has embraced this type of farming
- Include all the other villages of the 37 in the whole community so that all people benefit from this noble program
- The community should be taught how to grow grass and other trees that can be used as mulch since there is no grass for mulching
- Farmers to be encouraged to fence their fields as a way of keeping out animals from eating their mulch
- Rotation to be practiced and the trainers should be able to train the community on how to grow other crops besides maize
- The partners to make use of the demonstration plot that the chief offered so that all people from the 37 villages can come and learn farming from this demonstration plot

 

Transformation Centre 

The transformation centre has 52 registered infants and 33 teenagers. Most of these children live with very old grannies who cannot afford to send them to school or to buy school uniforms for them. These old grannies need assistance to help these children acquire birth-certificates and all other identity documents required for them to live a normal life in the country. The community really appreciates this initiative as it touches the future of the community. Their desire is to see more transformation centres being established in the whole community.

Impact
Many young children of this community who previously did not go to school have now been given the opportunity to learn at a centre that is so close to their homes. The teenagers, most of whom are orphans, are helped to remain in school because school fees and all other school requirements are provided to these children. The greatest impact of this program is that it has made the church realise the importance of caring for orphans and vulnerable children. The church in Makamure is now involved in the welfare of children and a Child Protection Committee has already been formed to ensure that these children go to school.

Challenges
The transformation centre can only cater for children from three villages of the community leaving out other children from other villages who are also far away from the normal schools. The transformation centre does not have qualified teachers as it relies on volunteers from the community. The teachers are also the cooks who cook for the children which means the teachers have a very big load upon their shoulders. Those that have school fees paid for them live with their old grandparents who cannot help them to study after school or help them to do homework.

Recommendations
-  The church should help by offering support to the children who live with their grannies
- More transformation centres should be established especially in places where there are no schools in the community
- There is a need for solar panels at Bethel Christian Fellowship so that children without parents can come and study at night.
- A safety centre should be established for such children because some of them live in very difficult circumstances

 

Livestock Management Project 

60 goats were provided to the members of this community which are to revolve around the orphan and vulnerable families. The goats are going a long way in providing milk to young children and their milk is more rich in protein than cow milk. The community is so grateful that the people of the community who did not have livestock have some animals at their homes. Training was offered by Fountain of Hope on how to manage animals and how to use them to improve the economic status of the community.

Impact
The impact of the goat project is in the testimony below :
An HIV/AIDS positive young lady became pregnant and eventually gave birth to a wonderful baby boy. According to the HIV/AIDS policy in Zimbabwe, a mother is supposed to breastfeed her baby exclusively with the mothers milk for the first six months before weaning the child to solid food. Three months after the birth of child the mother started to grow some sores on her body including the breasts meaning it wasn’t proper anymore for her to breastfeed the child. Thank God that her mother was one of the beneficiaries of the goat project. The goats provided milk to this baby boy and the boy is growing very well. Not only is the baby growing well but thank God the baby didn’t get HIV from the mother.

Challenges
Looking after goats is very new to the people of this community and therefore they are ignorant to the challenges of goats. Many goats died because of the people's ignorance. Since the community is about 50km away from the growth point where people can buy different vaccines for the animals, they always leave their goats untreated thereby causing them to die of various diseases.

Recommendations
- Veterinary services should be provided in the community or should be close to the community of Makamure
- More training is needed on how to look after goats
- More training on how to make cheese out of goat milk is needed
- Apart from training, partners should consider giving goats to the other villages of Makamure since currently only three villages benefit.

 

Appreciation

Fountain of Hope would like therefore to appreciate Bright Hope World for all the support that they are rendering to us for without their support we could not have achieved what we have achieved so far. We would like also to appreciate the Church and Community leaders for their co-operation in working with us in improving the quality of life in their communities. Thank you to different churches and pastors in all the communities who are doing a great job of discipling people and communities. Thank you also to the great team that we are working with in transforming Zimbabwe, one community at a time.

Thank you

Gideon & Jennifer on behalf of Fountain of Hope team