Seasonal greetings in the mighty name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is my pleasure to write the 2020 activity report for Chaba Christian Care Group.
We are grateful to God for what He has done with Chaba Christian Care Group this far and the vessel He uses to facilitate the Chaba project. In short I am saying we are equally grateful to Bright Hope World for all their labour and commitment to help us.
Once again a million thanks to BHW for making it possible that the seminar came to be a reality. We had our seminar for four days starting from Tuesday 17th to Friday 20th September 2019.
We trained 80 new people in the following fields: 40 cassava farmers; 20 maize farmers and 20 rice farmers. We also had our review on Saturday. 60 people attended and we had a good time.
We are grateful to faithful farmers who paid back the loans we gave them. We collected a total of K26,000 (approx US$3,000) from which we were able to assist maize farmers with a total of K10,000 and rice farmers with K8,000 for them to buy the most needed agricultural inputs.
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As for cassava farmers all of them will be given sticks to use in their fields and will be able to assist the next intake. We plan to train 40 cassava farmers next year and maintain the same number for maize and rice farmers at 20.
As they always say, good things always accompany bad things too. I am sad to report that some farmers failed to honour the micro-loan agreement. We are however patient to wait for them next year round.
Impact of the Seminar
I am overwhelmed by the growing interest of people wanting to be trained. This is an encouragement indeed to us. Gone are the days when people will be dragged in to come for training, this is no more. In fact people are asking for training. My research for this sudden change of events is because of the results or should I say what those attending the training are reaping. Their produce is what is motivating others to want to go for the same.
As I reported last time; we are slowly fighting poverty. This is indeed good news. Words are not enough to explain this.
Our prayer is that we slowly move towards our goal stipulated in our constitution.
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From the repaid loan money we also assisted one student who was accepted at Central African Baptist University to study a degree in Theology (K6,000). The young man I thought we should help is Lazarus Chanda. The young man got very good results in Grade 12. We supported him to attend training at Samfya Bible School and he proved his intelligence and wisdom when he was voted the best student in the 2018 intake. I was burdened to see how best he could be assisted.
With my upgrading of studies I learnt that at this university they encourage pastors to think of their Timothy. If they recommend someone he can be assisted with tuition scholarship. This is how I came up with him knowing how good he is. I processed his application and scholarship papers. By His grace he was accepted with 100% tuition scholarship. The trouble was where to get the remaining board and ration money. This is why we decided to support him. There are struggles here and there but the young man is coping with the situation. I am making sure I meet the other logistics for his training.
The sad story is that with the coronavirus pandemic the school is closed. However, they are learning on line. I keep on asking him how he is faring and he keeps on telling me that everything is fine. We would appreciate any help for this young man. There is still a lot to be done on his expenses: travelling costs from Kitwe to Chaba when schools close; developing assignment papers and communication talk time etc.
We are indebted to BHW for sponsoring a discipleship training course in Chaba. We had our extension programme in two places: Kabale and Mofu.
After learning for ten months we had our graduation in March. We had one more last week of learning from Tuesday 17th up to Friday 20th March 2020. On Saturday 21st March was our graduation day.
We had a total of 54 students when we started. Due to some unforeseen circumstances some dropped along the way but by His grace we graduated a total of 42 students. 22 of these were selected to go a step further in the ministry courses meaning they will be in the second phase of the extension program. For this we have lined up six intensive courses. God willing, if things go as we planned, the program will begin in June 2020.
We plan to have our learning as follows:
1) 15th – 23rd June 2020 : Bible Interpretation
2) 10th – 18th August 2020 : The Preacher and His Preaching
3) 7th - 15th September 2020 : Business Entrepreneurship
4) 12th – 20th October 2020 : Biblical Counselling
5) 9th - 17th November 2020 : Discipleship
6) 7th – 15th December 2020 : The Epistle of James
Many people appreciated this program. People are excited and would like to learn more. I have received requests from people who did not do the first program to come and learn. My response to this has been that the second year program is for those we assess and proven to do the second.
This is one programme we would like BHW to seriously consider support. More places are eager to receive them to get the discipleship training.
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Farming went as usual. People were serious to apply what they learnt. We appreciate the good rain fall we had this year. Crops like cassava and maize had good yields. See the cassava field photos above and below.
We had a problem though with rice. There was a flood meaning that all the rice fields were submerged leaving the rice vulnerable to the fish. Fishermen found rice fields the best places to lower their nets and enjoyed catching fish. This is really a very sad story.
In short what I am saying is that all our rice farmers have lost their crop and this loss is leading us to our loss in the money we loaned them. Even those we spared to give us this year will not be able to do so, so we don’t know what we will do. Talking about this mathematically we are saying that a total of K40,000 will be needed to bring the rice project back to normal. If we train 20 new farmers we will need another K8,000; bringing a total needed of K48,000.
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Our proposal will not differ very much from last year:
1) Seminar costs: Food, facilitators allowances and travelling costs K18,000 (approx US$2,000)
a. 20 people for maize growers.
b. 20 people for rice growers.
c. 40 people for cassava growers.
d. 60-100 people for a refresher course. This will be for one day and basically to encourage farmers to continue being faithful and work hard. Finding out their challenges and how best they can improve by encouraging them to learn from others who are doing well.
Thank you for taking time to read my report.
My sincere regards
Bobo Peter Chomba
PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR