The economic challenges and perennial drought that Zimbabwe has been subjected to, coupled with the issues of HIV/AIDS, has led to so many children being left without home or family. Bulawayo, which used to be the cleanest and safest town in Zimbabwe, is now full of street children who do not have a home or family to go to. These young children have been dying of hunger and starvation especially during this time of COVID-19 where everyone is struggling. Peniel Centre staff members were involved in the burial of one of the young street boys who died at the end of June 2020. Apart from the street children so many small children are dumped in the streets of Bulawayo and surrounding areas and all these young people need a home and family.
It is to this backdrop that Peniel Centre continues to provide a home, family, hope and a future to orphans and vulnerable children in Zimbabwe.
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At the moment the centre has got 26 children and 2 older aged out youngsters who still reside at the centre. The aged out ones are still at the centre because they are undertaking agriculture training in the hands of our agricultural officer. This is one of the skills that we want all the children to have so that they may be able to own land and live productive lives on their pieces of land when they leave Peniel Centre.
The children have continued learning at Peniel Centre during the national lockdown here in Zimbabwe thanks to two teachers who provided their services at the centre. They are all going back to formal school by the 28th July 2020. We are so grateful to Bright Hope World for all the support that is being rendered to these wonderful children of Peniel Centre.
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Peniel Centre has got a garden which helps the centre not only in providing fresh vegetables but gives agricultural skills to the children. Zimbabwe has got an agro-based economy and our desire at Peniel Centre is to give the children these skills so that they may be able to practice farming after life at Peniel Centre. One of the young people who was raised up at this centre and was trained in agriculture at Peniel Centre is now a farm manager in Harare.
Giving children agricultural skills will make them live independent lives after leaving this place. We are not only giving skills to children at this centre but also some from the surrounding areas come to be trained here. The garden helped us this year to produce maize for the centre in a year where there is drought in Zimbabwe.
Apart from the horticulture project, Peniel Centre also runs a broiler chicken project which serves the same purpose as the above project. Two of the young man who have aged out of the centre are the ones running this project and are being trained by our agricultural officer to get all the necessary skills to run their business effectively.
1) The biggest challenge for Peniel Centre is that the schools are far away from the centre, therefore the children need to be transported to school on a daily basis
2) The market for the produce from the garden is a bit far away from the centre
3) The training provided to the children is not yet formal so it is sometimes difficult for the trained youngsters to get jobs after the training
1) The agricultural training should be made official so as to help the graduates to be able to get employment after the training
2) Discipleship training should also be added to the agriculture training so that we produce farmers who fear God and who desire to make Him known
3) The Peniel training should be open to other young people in Zimbabwe who are struggling to make ends meet