Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitator 

Key Person: Stephen Daka

I talked with Steven via Skype. COVID has closed schools for three weeks again at the moment and this has been causing some issues for the orphans who are not able to catch up once schools do reopen. 

Rosemary has been having some health issues and lives alone in the house but Steven and his brothers do go and stay with her many times throughout the year.

Recent Events

Orphans

Currently there are 18 orphans on the programme, helped mainly with school fees and some school requirements. COVID has been an issue with schools being closed then once the school re-opens the teachers present material very fast to catch up on time frames which has caused a lot of children to fail exams.

Some of the orphans who have finshed school are now being encouraged to have gardens, growing tomatoes and off season green maize to help with their support.

Farming

Last year they had a good crop of maize. Currently they are in talks with a local organisation to get involved with soy bean production. Mr Mwelwa is coming to speak to the church members about how the programme will work, giving farmers seed and then buying the produce to be processed in the capital city of Lusaka, making milk and other soy products. 

Motorbike

The motorbike that the late Lonard used has been fixed up and Steven is still using it for transport. This has been of great benefit to Steven to travel to and from the village and visit other church members. 

Fish Ponds

These have now been cleared out and they are waiting for the COVID lockdown to finish so they can go and purchase a batch of fingerlings to grow on as a source of income for helping to sponsor the orphans.

Pigs

The initial lot of pigs we saw two years ago ended up being sold as the guardians were not ready with pig housing structures to safely house the animals. The money was spent on maize seed.  Currently they have restarted the programme and have two female pigs, one just had a litter of six piglets and the other is still pregnant.

The plan is still to give a pig to a guardian of the orphans, and then the guardian will repay once a litter is born to enable Chifundo to empower more families.

Comments

I would recommend keeping the budget the same here until we are able to get back to Zambia and visit in person.