This community was established over a 100 years ago when Zimbabwe was colonized, the people of this community were taken away from very fertile lands and were dumped into this low rainfall area with poor sandy soils. The people were dumped into this community which was then infested with wild animals and the forest was very thick in this area. Sadly everything has changed now, the place that had a thick forest now is almost like a desert such that people struggle to get leaves and grass to mulch their gardens. The land has got very poor soils and the people of this community have suffered hunger for a long time.
Drinking water is always a problem in this community, people share water with animals in some of the 37 villages of the community. Some children walk up to 10km to the nearest school and this has caused some of them to drop out of school. The community has got so many unemployed young people who unfortunately do not have anything to do because the only source of livelihood is farming. Farming has not been producing much due to the change of climatic conditions, deforestation, soil erosion, poor soils, and also farming methods that have not been working well.
The community is characterised by hunger, starvation, poor road connections, poor communications network, poor pass rates at school, high school dropouts especially amongst girls, high teenage pregnancy cases especially during this time of the pandemic, no community based health care centre etc. It is to this backdrop that Fountain of Hope endeavours to improve the quality of life in this community, one village at a time through increasing food security, increasing access to clean and safe drinking water, increasing school attendance of orphans and vulnerable children, through the provision of life-skills to the vulnerable young people and also the establishment of a community based health facility. Fountain of Hope has worked so far in four villages of the community and these are Madzivire, Taru, Masvingise and Dambashoko. We are looking forward to move on to Mapako and Gwenere villages of Makamure.
Please find below the success and challenges of some of our programs this year in Makamure community:
Our aim is to increase food security in this community of 37 villages, one village at a time. We envision a community that is self-reliant in the next 10 years, a community that is capable of producing its own food for consumption and for sale; a community that is able to send its own orphans and vulnerable children to school and a community that has been empowered to initiate and run its own community based projects.
This is the community with the largest number of people who were trained this past season to practice Foundations for Farming. About 190 people were trained in this community and these people have been sending out the message of this new way of farming to all the other villages that we have not reached so far. We are so thankful that the last Field Day that we ran in this community was attended by so many people including the neighbouring chiefs. This community is undoubtedly becoming a beacon of knowledge as far as farming God’s way is concerned to all the other surrounding communities. We are so grateful to our agricultural officer for a job well done in the villages that he has trained so far in this community. Thank you too, to Bright Hope World for all the support that is being rendered to the community.
Our success rate in all the four villages is the highest so far as far as this program is concerned. The people of this community are really ready to get out of poverty and hunger hence they are so much committed to this program of Foundations for Farming. Most of our farmers in this community did exceptionally well, they harvested maize, sorghum, cow peas and ground nuts. We thank God that some of them are even now selling their cow peas and ground nuts to get an income. The people of this community are very excited about this program which came to them after losing their cows to drought and diseases.
Challenges and Solutions:
The greatest challenge that we faced this year was the failure to assist all the people who came forward for training with adequate seed for the farming season. We also struggled to get ground nuts and cow peas on time for our farmers to grow them in their fields. We thank God that they still managed to grow them since there was still moisture in the ground. We are really indebted to our agricultural officer and his team, for making this program a success in this community.
Recommendations:
1) Training should start as soon as people finish off harvesting
2) Fountain of Hope should consider helping the farmers to sell their produce to town especially during the lockdown season where people are not allowed to move around
3) If resources are permitting, the whole village should be trained and then all the trained farmers should be empowered to get the seeds
4) Other villages should also be trained since they are all eager to be part of this program
5) Fountain of Hope should consider increasing the area of farming so that the beneficiaries may harvest a surplus to sell to earn an income
6) Farming learning clubs or hubs should be established so that farmers may be able to gather together and learn from each other or pray together.
This is a program whose aim is to transform vulnerable children and teenagers holistically; spiritually, physically, materially, emotionally and socially. There is a lot of work that our staff members are involved in as they lead this process of bringing healing and transforming the lives of the vulnerable children. Our desire is to touch the vulnerable children from 0 years to 21. We currently have been assisting girls to get their monthly towels from the community’s high school. This is going a long way in restoring dignity to these wonderful girls since the support is enabling them to remain in school. Apart from these girls, we are supporting 52 orphans and vulnerable children with education assistance and pyscho-social support from this community.
We have also moved a step further and are now offering agriculture training skills for two years to all young people who have dropped out of school or are just staying at home doing nothing. This training is going a long way in opening up the eyes of the young people to see what they can do in a land that looks so hopeless. They are not only given agriculture lessons but also are taught a bit of mathematics and English so that they may be able to add and understand the English language. We have trained 15 youngsters so far including girls to have agricultural skills and some them graduated this past July. Two of the girls who graduated have already started running a shop in the community, while others have already been employed. These youngsters now know how to grow a variety of horticultural crops as well as other crops like maize; they also have the skills of taking care of livestock like cows and chickens. Thank you so much Bright Hope World for partnering with us in breaking the cycle of poverty in Makamure community.
Challenges:
1) COVID-19 remains the biggest challenge for young people in poor communities like this one.
2) Children have been in and out of school and those in town are learning online while these ones in the rural area are finding it hard to buy the gadgets to use to do online learning. It is always difficult because even if they had the gadgets, connectivity to the internet is non-existent in this community.
3) Sanitary towels for girls are very expensive and this takes away dignity from some of the young girls that we work with and this is what has pushed us to consider meeting this need in this community.
4) It took us many months for some of the young children to get their Identity document papers and this is because of long queues at the registry’s office.
5) Some of those who finished their agriculture training are finding it hard to get employment.
6) The community does not have many boreholes where these youngsters may be able to start gardening not as a subsistence farming but as commercial.
Recommendations:
1) Laptops and tablets are needed for this Transformation Centre so that children may be able to learn online like the children in town.
2) More equipment and games are needed for the Psycho-social support program for orphans and vulnerable children in this community.
3) The community requested Fountain of Hope to consider opening an English class for the orphans and vulnerable children in the community since they don’t use English a lot at school and this makes them unable to participate well in the world.
4) Fountain of Hope and the community should consider to open a very big section of land for farming so that all the youngsters who have done the horticulture training will have the opportunity to grow their own crops for the market.
5) The land and the training centre are already available and Fountain of Hope should establish this big garden for learning purposes as well as for young people to be able to use it to run farming businesses.
Fountain of Hope staff members would like to hereby register their deep appreciation to Bright Hope World for all the support that is being rendered to the communities and villages that we are working in. Thank you so much for partnering with us in bringing hope to the hopeless, our communities are slowly but surely getting transformed through the support that comes from you. Your support has undoubtedly brought hope to the young people whose hopes were dashed by a myriad of challenges that we are going through right here in Zimbabwe. The farming God’s way program has brought smiles on the hearts of the families that used to struggle with food insecurity.
Our economic challenges coupled with the deadly pandemic issues has really brought many communities to their knees. Most of our communities were and are really affected by COVID-19 and many people lost their jobs, while a number of grandparents who were now the sole providers of orphans and vulnerable children are succumbing or have succumbed to the deadly pandemic. In one of the communities that we work with, this year’s winter season really brought a dark cloud over the community since a day would barely go by without the death of an old person. Children are left with no food and some of them without shelter. Thank you so much Bright Hope World that through your support, we are able to provide shelter at Peniel Centre as well as feeding these children at our Transformation Centres.
The support from Bright Hope World has opened a great opportunity for our team to be able to disciple the people from the communities that we work with. The support for the Transformation Centres is helping us to touch the lives of children, the youth and the community at large. The Foundations for Farming has brought a number of people to Christ and now we are coming up with farmers groups which are smaller groups in the villages that we work with where farmers meet together to learn and to pray together. The skills development centre has gone a long way in taking young people off the streets and these young people are being taught to know God and make Him known.
Thank you so much Bright Hope World for the support.