Makamure Community Project Report from Fountain of Hope

This is one of the largest communities that we are working in of all communities that we work with. It has a total of 37 villages and Fountain of Hope is doing its best to turn this dry land, green. The community came about during the colonisation of Zimbabwe when the people were moved from the fertile land to this poor sandy soil. The name Makamure means ‘division’, the community is divided by a big river which has silted due to stream bank cultivation that takes place upstream. The people of this community have lived a life of being divided just as the name of the place suggests. The divisions in the community meant community based development could not take place hence the community has been living in abject poverty for many years. The community for many years has been known for drought, uneducated youngsters (most of them would fail to go to high school due to lack of finances), was the community where many people died of cholera in 2008, known for ancestral worship and poor road and communication networks. 

It is to this backdrop that Fountain of Hope seeks to improve the quality of life in this community through improving food security, increasing school enrolment amongst orphans and vulnerable children, improving community based health delivery systems, increasing livestock production, increasing access to safe and clean drinking water as well as increasing water harvesting projects for productive purposes. Fountain of Hope has so far worked with only 7 villages of the 37 and work is slowly but surely moving towards the transformation of this community. Please see herein below some of the projects that we are running in Makamure community and how those projects are having a positive impact on the lives of the community. 

Recent Events

Foundations for Farming

This program which is also called Farming God’s Way is all about improving food security in the poor community of Makamure through training and empowering people to practice conservation farming. We are training people of this community to establish Pfumvunza plots which have the potential to provide enough food for a family of six for the whole year. This year we diversified our farming training and included sorghum, groundnuts and roundnuts training. We decided to include legumes on our training and on empowering our farmers because legumes help in improving the fertility of the soil. 

We are glad to report that sorghum did exceptionally well in some of our farmers' fields this year even though the rain was very scarce. Groundnuts and roundnuts also did well in people’s fields and Fountain of Hope has been working on how to market the produce. We are looking forward to seeing an increase of these crops in the coming seasons. 150 people altogether were trained from the 7 villages of Makamure on Farming God’s Way principles.  

Gardening

Gardens are being established in this community where unemployment is at over 90% and where farming is the main source of livelihood. The first garden was established in Madzivire village and another one has just been established in Marozva village and the community gets water from the solar powered borehole and also from a bush pump respectively. The newly established garden has got 60 beneficiaries and these people get their water from a bush pump borehole. The garden is doing very well and is transforming the lives of many families. Please see herein below the appreciation from the chief: 

“As the chief in this community of Makamure, I am so much grateful to Fountain of Hope for all the support that they are supporting my community with. My community has been known for poverty but through Fountain of Hope, there is a very big difference that is taking place in this wonderful community. We used not to see green things around here especially here in this village of Marozva but now look at our land it is now green. 

I would like to let Fountain of Hope know that as the leadership of this community we will continue to work with you in transforming our community. We will surely work out together with you in changing this community to become green so that our children and the next generation may have plenty of food. My community is really benefitting a lot from the projects that you are running right here, our community will never be the same again. Thank you”

Clean and Safe Drinking Water

For many years, people of this community have been sharing water with animals from the river bed of one of the big rivers that they have in the community, hence many people died in 2008 of cholera. Fountain of Hope desires to see the whole of this community getting clean and safe drinking water as a way of curbing the spread of water borne diseases. 

Fountain of Hope has provided Madzivire village with a borehole which gives safe and clean water to the community and which is also used by the 120 gardeners from Madzivire community. The other borehole was done at the two community schools and is producing 10,000 litres of water on a daily basis. The borehole is being used to provide drinking water to the school staff members as well as to the school children. Since the school was started, the school’s pass rate has been very low due to the fact that the schools would always get unqualified teachers who would make the children to fail. It is estimated that the pass rate at the school is going to increase because the school now receives qualified teachers from the Ministry of Education. The students had not been studying agriculture but have now already started learning agriculture due to the availability of a water supply.

This support has unlocked a number of opportunities for the school like now it has a computer teacher who already has opened up a lab, meaning that there are now diverse subjects that the school students are learning. This is a great development in the community. 

Transformation Centre

This transformation centre mainly caters for young people from day one to 18 years of age. These young people, who mostly are orphans and vulnerable children from the whole community of Makamure, are assisted with pyscho-social support programs which include skills development, agriculture management skills, orphans and vulnerable children’s resilience camps, birth certificate assistance process, food support. Please see one of the stories below:

Two twins were born by a wonderful mother who was a cross-border trader from the community of Makamure. After the birth of these twins the mother got sick and subsequently stopped feeding the children. Thank God for the goat project that Fountain of Hope initiated in this community, it did not take long for the community to get milk from the goat project. Unfortunately the mother did not survive long, she died leaving 3-month old twins in the custody of their old grandparents. The grandparents have also been looking after other three more orphans and having two more became a very big challenge for them.

Thank God for the volunteers of the transformation centre who quickly came in to assist this family. Our volunteers are there to ensure that these twins have got food on a daily basis and they are also helping the grandparents with food to feed the other three children. The good thing with the transformation centre is that children will not be taken out of their community but will be looked after by their own grandparents. Thank you so much for the support.  

Current Issues and Challenges

1) Many young people who are not employed 

2) Many villages still do not have clean water and therefore rely more on the river and when the river has dried up people walk for long distances to get water 

3) The market for the gardeners is a bit far away and there is a need for transport to take their produce to the market 

4) The Madzivire garden seems to be too small for the community and needs to be extended so that more people can be involved in the garden 

5) Rainfall pattern in this community is so poor to sustain crops  

Recommendations

1) The community recommended the establishment of a borehole and subsequently a garden in Gwenere village where there are so many people who walk for 5 km one way to get drinking water 

2) The expansion of the garden so as to include the youth in the community who are not employed (this is going to be the source of employment in the community) 

3) More young people to be trained in agriculture and be equipped to start practicing farming to enable them to earn a living 

4) To empower the community to take farming as a business