Main Goal: To reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS and improve the quality of life in Mthombothemba by December 2018
The evaluation was attended by 30 members of Ward One of Umguza which is Mthombothemba community at the Praise and Worship Centre Church. The aim of the meeting was to look at the progress and the impact of the projects run by Fountain of Hope in the community of Mthombothemba, especially in reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS and improving the quality of life. The main goal of the community came about in 2013 when Fountain of Hope met with the entire community of Mthombothemba including its leaders to discuss the root causes of poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS in the community. It was at this meeting that a five year action plan was drafted and Fountain of Hope was tasked to implement development projects in the community as a way of improving the quality of life for all individuals in the community. The seven objectives that the community and Fountain of Hope came up with are reported in this report.
Objective: To strengthen and improve nutrition and income of 100 extremely poor households, especially those with orphans and vulnerable children, through agricultural support and skills development in Mthombothemba by December 2018.
Current Situation: 55 households have been trained and equipped with knowledge on how to use Farming God's Way to improve household food security. The people of this community are very much convinced about this type of farming and the challenge has been the drought that the community faced in the past seasons.
Nutritional Gardens: Fountain of Hope has so far established four small–scale community based nutritional gardens which are all going a long way in improving the quality of food that orphans and vulnerable children are getting on a daily basis. 85 families are benefitting from these gardens. Some of the families are able to sell the surplus and use the money to buy more food for their families.
Challenges: Mthombothemba, just like all other communities in Zimbabwe especially those in the southern part of the country, has been hard hit by drought in the past years. This season was the worst as temperatures continued to soar higher and higher during the rainy season resulting in making the country experience one of the worst droughts in years. The high temperatures resulted in sapping out the water from the dams that were made by the people and also in some of the boreholes. This eventually brought all the farmers to challenging times as they could not utilise the God given land to grow crops. The people of this community summoned everyone to pray for rain to fill their dams as well as raise up the ground water table so that the boreholes could have water. The Lord answered their prayers and rain came for three days. The two dams are now full of water which they are using to water their garden and some of the boreholes have got water which they using for domestic purposes.
Objective: To empower 60 orphan families to own a herd of goats each for the betterment of their families by 2018
Current Situation: 49 families have so far been empowered with a herd of goats each which are going a long way in providing some of the families with fresh milk on a daily basis and some of them are able to pay school fees for their children. Please see testimonies below for more on what the Lord has been doing in this project.
Challenges: Due to the drought that the nation of Zimbabwe is experiencing, the grazing area of Mthombothemba was left bare without grass or tree branches for the goats to eat, resulting in some goats dying. Apart from the grazing challenges, there also wasn’t water as the dams and some boreholes had dried up, so this led to some of the farmers losing their goats to drought. Some stray dogs also killed some goats in the village. The current dip tank for the community is far away from those in village C and D, thereby putting their animals at higher risk of dying of tick borne diseases. To get to the community dip tank, they have to walk for 30 km to and fro with the animals which is difficult for the animals to do.
Ojective: To improve the quality of life of orphans and vulnerable children in Mthombothemba community by 2018
Current Situation: The community appreciated the food relief program/orphans and vulnerable children feeding scheme which is going a long way in enabling these children to have food on a daily basis. These children are also able to remain in school like other children in the community. There has been a great improvement in the pass rate amongst these children because they are well fed at the feeding program.
Challenges: The challenge is that due to hunger and starvation in the country, there are so many children who need food relief. The government had promised that they will come over and add more support to such initiatives but they also do not have enough to feed the whole nation.
Birth Certificates: The community appreciated Fountain of Hope for their assistance in helping the children who do not have birth certificates to get them. Fountain of Hope has been on the forefront of helping some of these orphans and vulnerable children acquire birth certificates although the process is very difficult in Zimbabwe. Those with these documents are able to go to school and participate in all public activities, thanks to Fountain of Hope.
However it is often difficult to trace the relatives of some of the children who are orphans and sometimes it needs a lot of money to travel to faraway places to meet with the relatives as required by the law of Zimbabwe. Some of the relatives are also reluctant to assist as they don’t want these children to be independent.
Objective: To increase access to education, psycho-social support and health for orphans and vulnerable children in Mthombothemba by December 2018
Current Situation: We thank God that through the support from Bright Hope World, Fountain of Hope is able to pay school fees for 30 orphans and vulnerable children from the community of Mthombothemba. It is not only school fees that are paid but Fountain of Hope opened a study centre where these children come to study in order to improve their grades at school. Due to this study centre the school pass rate at one of the primary schools in the community rose from 2% in 2013 to 85% in 2015!
Challenges: The high school is a long way away, about 14 km away from some of the children, and this makes it difficult for these children to excel very much. The primary school is within reach of all the children but their challenge is that just like all rural schools in the country, the school does not get good quality teachers. One of the things that has contributed to the school not getting better teachers is that there is no accommodation for the teaching staff members at the school.
Psycho-social Support: The community very much appreciated Fountain of Hope for running such a program which brings healing to the vulnerable children of the community. The program has been in demand such that all the schools around have been asking for it. This year alone FHF has helped 200 children. Unfortunately Fountain of Hope has only got one person who is a social worker and this makes it difficult to keep on running this program and even to extend it to the schools around. Fountain of Hope relies on hiring professionals to come and run this program and it is only run when these professionals are free.
Objective: To confront the root causes of poverty and remove the barriers to economic self-sufficiency for women and the entire community by 50% by December 2018
Current Situation: The community appreciated Fountain of Hope for establishing such groups for women of Mthombothemba. Small groups of 10-20 women form savings groups, through which they establish basic businesses according to personal strengths and available resources. Fountain of Hope is also considering teaching these women basic business skills which will enable them to run their small initiatives well.
The Self-Help groups specifically target underprivileged women in the community. They are a very successful instrument in combating poverty in a sustainable way. They empower the very poor, the majority being women, socially, economically and politically empowering them to live a life of dignity with their children in the community. In contrast to other development approaches, the group members receive no material help. Instead as a result of capacity building received from Fountain of Hope, the very poor are empowered to take control of their own lives.
Challenges: Due to deflation that Zimbabwe is experiencing now it has been difficult for these ladies to see their businesses doing very well since there is no money in the country. Some of them desire to import goods for sale in Zimbabwe but our laws at Zimbabwe borders are not favourable for such businesses and this has led to so many of them losing their money.
Skills Training for Young People: Fountain of Hope realised that there is no employment in Zimbabwe and has assisted about 20 young people to do skills training courses at one of the training centres so that they will be able to earn a living. The community now has builders from the young boys who were trained in building skills. These young men are now building nice houses in the community as well as outside the community and this helps them to earn a living.
Challenges: The skills training courses are always expensive and this hinders the progress of seeing many young people going for training. Most of them would also need the capital to start businesses and it is difficult to get this capital.
Objective: To see improved access to water for human consumption and for productivity purposes in Mthombothemba through drilling, installation and rehabilitation of boreholes.
Current Situation: Fountain of Hope installed two boreholes with solar powered pumps in Mthombothemba, one which is benefitting 340 school children and the other one which is for a nutritional garden for the feeding program. The community is so excited about this project for it is going a long way in providing safe drinking water to children as well as water for small scale irrigation purposes. A small garden was established which uses a drip irrigation system to water the tomatoes and veggies that are in the garden.
Challenges: The solar pump does not have many challenges as it uses the sun as its source of energy and this is what the community have been anticipating for several years. They really wanted to have something that can enable them to have water without paying electricity for it.
Objective: To ensure access to primary health care services for all OVCs and the 10,000 people of Mthombothemba and its surrounding areas.
Current Situation: Fountain of Hope mobilised the community to consider building a clinic themselves and so far they have dug the foundation of the clinic. They have not yet built the clinic but they are very enthusiastic about building something with their own hands without outside assistance. Fountain of Hope has so far brought a mobile clinic to the centre for the people to have a taste of how it is to have doctors and nurses coming to their community.
Challenges: The community of Mthombothemba does not have the necessary natural resources needed to put up a structure and this will cost them a lot as they have to go many miles away to get the needed resources. There is no sand, pit sand etc. in Mthombothemba and getting these resources from somewhere else would need the approval of the council and would require transport to deliver the resource.
The community leaders were asked to discuss this in their meeting and they will come back to Fountain of Hope informing them regarding the way forward.
Ruth's mother belongs to one of the Self-Help Groups which was started in Mthombothemba in 2014. Ruth's father is not employed and only earns money through piece jobs if and whenever they are there. Her mother also is not formally employed and had been struggling up until she became part of the Self-Help Group. A group was started in 2014 where ladies would bring together $0.50 per week. After some weeks of investing their money into the group, they agreed that it was time for the members to get loans from the group and to start investing those loans into their own businesses.
Ruth's mother was given $50 which she took to order a few second clothes to sell at the nearby mines. She kept on selling things until she had gathered enough to start a small tuck-shop at her home. The tuck-shop is the only one in that part of village D and many people come to buy groceries from this woman's tuck-shop.
Her business has now grown and instead of buying a few second hand clothes for resale, she now buys bales of clothes from Mozambique to resell not only in the community but in Bulawayo town. Their group is really growing even though the financial environment doesn’t look very good in Zimbabwe.
Ruth is able to go to school with the money that her mother got from the community based group which started by banking only $0.50 a week. She pays almost $400 at her school per school term apart from transport money.
When Fountain of Hope initially came to Mthombothemba, no one really wanted to assist orphans because the number had become so huge due to HIV/AIDS. A number of orphans were fending for themselves since most of them belonged to child-headed households. HIV/AIDS was also regarded as a curse hence the community didn’t want to be involved with these so called “cursed” children. Many orphans in this community had turned to be street children and most girls became prostitutes in order for them to survive.
It took several years for Fountain of Hope to convince the members of the community that these children are not cursed children but are now the community's children and they need to be given love by everyone from the community. We are now glad to testify that Mthombothemba has got one of the most effective child-protection committees in Matabeleland region. This community does not just go to sleep without knowing whether these children have somewhere to sleep or not.
To show how much they love orphans, between 2014 and 2015 some women from this community went a step further to build a kitchen for the orphans where these children would come and get a meal on a daily basis. It was really an amazing thing to see these people taking such an initiative when a few years earlier they literally didn’t care for orphans. These women even put a roof on the kitchen with their own community material where no money was used to do so. They went into the bush to cut grass and bravely went up the hut to thatch it.
These are some of the changes that we see in this community of Mthombothemba where they now are convinced that the orphans and vulnerable children in their community need their love and care. The community is prepared to go the extra mile in helping these children.
Kholeka Mathe is a widow living with her 8 year old grandchild, Brighton. Brighton is doing grade two currently at Mthombothemba primary school. The day that Kholeka was told she was one of the beneficiaries of the goat loan scheme her hope for the future of her grandchild was completely restored. She was worried about how she would raise money for school fees for her grandchild as she had no other means of income. When she received the goats, she felt like Jesus himself had come over miraculously to save her from her situation. This led her to commit herself to take care of these goats for she sees Jesus always in the form of these goats that are already going a long way in making her grandchild remain in school.
She currently has 8 goats from the 3 she received and she looks after the goats herself, feeds them daily and gives them water as well. Her desire is to see them increasing so that she will be able to sell them up until her grandchild is able to go to University. They are now helping Brighton to be in school.
Most of the children who come to the feeding centre live with their old grannies who cannot in any way fend for these children. The magnitude of the problem had left the community on its knees, as the number of children kept increasing due to HIV/AIDS. The community leaders had given up and a number of these children had dropped out of school and turned to street life where they were scavenging for food. To add salt to the injury, there has been hunger in the community for the past seasons and this made it impossible for the people of the community to take care of orphans and vulnerable children.
Thanks to the introduction of the feeding scheme, this is really going a long way in enabling the vulnerable children to have food on a daily basis. These children do not just get food at the feeding centre but are also fed with the word of God which has brought hope and light to so many of them. They are also given an opportunity to study under the tutorship of one of the staff members of Fountain of Hope. Last year we had 19 of these children who were doing grade seven at Mthombothemba primary school and amazingly all of them passed their final examinations and are now doing form one. Their doing well at school increased the pass rate percentage of Mthombothemba primary school from 3% to 85%.
Most of these children are some of the finest young people at school, home and in the community. They hope to do well in life; some would like to be pilots, doctors, politicians, etc.
There is a great change that everyone is noticing in this community as people of this community have first of all realised that they are the first resource in bringing development to their community. This community did not used to meet together and discuss matters that have to do with development serve for political meetings only. The community appreciates very much Fountain of Hope especially in mobilising the members of the community to be able to work together towards finding solutions to their problems and struggles. Thank you also Bright Hope World for if it was not for your support Fountain of Hope could not have achieved what they have achieved so far in this community.
Through the support of Bright Hope World the community of Mthombothemba is now able to take charge of their situation and are still being empowered by Fountain of Hope to assess the root cause of their poverty, questioning their history, current status both negative and positive, and determining appropriately how to utilise resources within their reach to improve their living standards.
This is the only community in the entire nation of Zimbabwe which has so far applied to have a co-operative status and this means that unlike other communities, the community members have a say in what is happening in their community; they are the stakeholders of their own destiny.
The community appreciated Fountain of Hope for its involvement in the development of Mthombothemba and they would like to see all these projects running and improving the quality of life.
“These projects are really reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS in our community. We are not even feeling the pinch of it because through these programs our children who are the most affected are able to go to school, their birth certificates are acquired, and they have food every day even in this kind of environment. Thank you so much Fountain of Hope for your kindness”.
Mr Sibanda, the head of village heads