Key Person: Doris Nksau
Schools are currently closed for 21 days as the third wave of COVID has hit Zambia. The orphans in the Patience programme have been really disrupted over the last year, with many of them struggling to focus and so failing their exams at the end of last year. They are all in Grade 12 this year and are hoping to pass.
There are currently 15 orphans still being helped into school, all of whom are struggling this year to complete the required learning due to school closures because of COVID. Doris aims that next year all these children will have finished school.
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The orphans' field has produced a lot of maize, with 3 limas being grown.
16 farmers from the community were given a refresher course in Foundations for Farming in February. The focus was on planting to the correct spacing to ensure good crop coverage and yields. Each farmer has now gone to sort out their own fields, making compost, clearing land and digging pot holes.
Next year the current 15 orphans in the programme will be finished school and Doris wants to run a more sustainable model through income generating activities. They have put together a proposal for a chicken rearing unit for broilers. They aim to run 200 chickens at a time, taking 6 weeks to raise them to point of sale. There will be six rounds per year and this will create a profit of around US$720.
They already have the chicken houses built from when Lemon was there so the set up cost is not great.
The payment due to go in November this year will be the last payment required for orphan support and no further funds will be needed for this.
I do however recommend we fund the set-up of the chicken rearing unit (US$770) as this will enable them to become self-sustainable moving forward and able to look after more vulnerable children in the community. We will also still respond to farming training funding requests as they come through.