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The Fountain of Hope team is very grateful to Bright Hope World for your support. The support is undoubtedly changing and transforming communities we work with in Zimbabwe. The involvement of our team in community development is amazingly opening doors for people to come to know Christ. People are not only coming to know Christ, but the church has got a very wide door to disciple the community. Fountain of Hope and the church in Makamure are well known as groups of people who are bringing life and light to the community.
One of the things that made Fountain of Hope to be appreciated by the chief and the people of the community is how four young children who were born during the time of Covid were well looked after by the organisation and two of them who are twins are looking very healthy and are growing very well. The parents of the twins died during the Covid pandemic leaving the children in the hands of ailing grandparents. This act of kindness and love brought many people closer to God and many people are also growing in showing kindness one to another.
Due to high unemployment and economic challenges, a lot of our young people in Zimbabwe have been turning into drug and substance abuse and many of them have died. Others are going through hard times. The problem of drug abuse has been recorded in most of our schools and communities and the government has been working hard to find solutions to this problem. We are very glad to report that Fountain of Hope was also asked by the Ministry of Education in Zimbabwe to work with schools in Chivi District to reduce this phenomenon of drug abuse in schools. We were one of the first organisations to be given the green light to use the Bible in schools, preaching in schools was banned some years back. We are glad that we are already experiencing a great transformation amongst school children in the community of Makamure.
Thank you so much Bright Hope World for brightening the lives of downtrodden communities, please find herein below more about the projects that we are involved in:
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This is our main project that we are doing in dry provinces of Matabeleland South, North and Masvingo, covering three provinces of Zimbabwe. All these areas where we are doing training in Foundations for Farming are in climatic region 5 of Zimbabwe. One thing that we are so excited about is that the people of these areas are so passionate about farming, and they believe that Foundations of Farming is one of the ways given by God to break the cycle of poverty.
Of all the communities that we are running Farming God’s Way in, one community called Majiji is the only one that received meaningful rainfall this farming season. In Mtshazo and Gwakwe, people managed to harvest groundnuts, same as in Makamure, but Chikofa was the worst community not to harvest something out of their fields. We are grateful to our trainers that they didn’t stop training the farmers even though the rainfall was not favourable and the people from these communities have been coming for training. They even have been inviting others to come for the training.
These centres were established to bring hope and create a future to orphans and vulnerable children from communities that we work with. Our transformational centres cater for children from those who are 0 years to 20 years; our aim is to give them skills so that they may survive through those skills. We currently have three transformational centres and are working on establishing another one at Majiji community.
This year has been a great year for our transformational centres because most of our children from these centres got their identity documents save for a few. We already have a lot of testimonies of how these transformational centres are bringing hope and life to the young people who are raised up without parents or even without grandparents. Please find below one of the testimonies.
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This is a centre for those children who really come from difficult circumstances or from hard places. It provides a home, family, hope and a future to orphans and vulnerable children. It is also a safe centre for homeless, nationless and street children and is a place where they live for a short time while alternative accommodation is sought for them.
These children are provided with a place to sleep, complete bedding, education, transport to school and all other necessary things for them to grow up like other children. We take them for education up until they have a degree, a diploma or a skill which will help them to make a living. Please find below the story of one of the young people who went through Peniel Centre.
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As alluded above, Zimbabwe is going through the problem of high unemployment especially amongst the young people. A number of these young people end up swimming in drug and substance abuse. Fountain of Hope is slowly but surely fighting out unemployment, drug abuse, and early girl child marriages through providing skills to young people which they can survive on.
Our first training; young people who were into all kinds of juvenile delinquencies were the first ones to be taken and were trained by our committed trainer. Our trainer exposes these young people to so many life changing issues which have ushered some of them into employment in a country where there are jobs and some of them are able to make a living on their own.
We planned to train the second and third batch of students for two years and not only for .jpg)
one year like we did with the first students. Our committed trainer is doing his best to train these young people and all of them are currently on attachment in one of our rural areas where they are roofing a clinic house (pictured).
Apart from these eight, we have got two who just completed building training and are working on their own to make a living. Five young girls who did catering have also just completed their training and are working on coming up with a catering club for them to make a living. Our Skills Training Department is doing a great job of making young people to be focused and make a living out of their training.
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The thrust of Fountain of Hope is to increase the community’s access unto clean water for drinking as well as for productive purposes. This year our training for these garden farmers had been focused on how to produce organic fertilizers to increase the fertility of the soil. Our soils are poor sandy soil and the only way of making them to produce better yields is through enriching them. Since we work with rural people who cannot buy fertilizers for their gardens, we train them to use the locally available resources to enrich their gardens (see photo of the community learning how to make organic fertilizer), thereby making the farmers to completely go organic and produce organic crops which are completely good for consumption.
We are still aiming at establishing some of these gardens at Gwenere village, Makamure School, Mandiva School and other schools that we are working with. We thank God that our gardens are not only providing the farmers with fresh vegetables, but they are making them to have money to send some of their children to school.
Our agricultural trainer has helped us to start a greenhouse garden at Peniel Centre and we hope that we will be able to spread this to other communities. We desire to see them growing and harvesting crops all year round hence we have just started training them to start such kind of gardens.
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Our best farmer from Majiji community, Mr Ncube, is very much appreciative of this programme because this is the only season that he got something out of his field. This is what he had to say to our agricultural coordinator.
“On behalf of the people of the community and my family, I am grateful to you Mr H for introducing this type of farming into our community. We have been tired of hunger and starvation and thank God that this programme is helping us to chase away such challenges. We are also grateful to you guys that you do not only come over here to teach us farming but you are also helping us to know God and to make Him known.
I am not going to sit on my laurels but will work hard in my field and also in making other people know God and know this programme that chases away hunger from our community. We have been a community that is even not known by the government and that is why we don’t have proper roads here, but all this did not stop you from coming to see us and to train us. Please keep on coming to teach us, so that in the future we may be able to teach others too. Thank you."
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Shamiso was only 8 months old when both her parents died, and she was left in the custody of her old grandmother. The maternal grandmother, who wasn’t working and who didn’t have any source of income, was so excited when the transformation centre was opened closer to her. Shamiso literally grew up in the hands of the staff members at the transformation centre. They are not only provided with food at the centre but are also assisted to go to school and to complete the same. She was helped to acquire a birth-certificate so that she may be able to participate in all sports activities at school and participate in writing exams. Apart from all this, exam fees were also provided up until she had to go and do skills development training. She now has two skills and is looking forward to running her own business once she has enough capital.
Her grandmother is very grateful to Fountain of Hope for opening a door to help her and her grandchild, there was literally no one to help.
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Kudzi’s parents died when he was young, and he was left with literally no one to take care of him. His maternal grandmother was working for a family in town, and he didn’t have the money to travel to town to meet with her. He was therefore employed at grade 4 by one of the neighbours who needed someone to look after his cows. After working for a year without being paid and only being given food, he decided to walk to town where the grandmother was. He walked for many kilometres until someone who was a well-wisher picked him up and drop him in town.
Thank God that he was picked up by some children of God who were doing their outreach by the bus stop. The well-wishers sent out the word that there is a young boy who is looking for his grandmother, and within a few days he was united with his grandmother, the only relative that he knew. Unfortunately, the grandmother is just a maid without accommodation; her employer had provided her with a small bedroom for her to sleep alone. The only solution was to dump the grandchild back onto the streets but thank God the church people helped her again to bring this young man to Peniel Centre where a home, family, hope and a future was provided for him.
He was helped to go back to school even though he had spent two years without going to school. He went to school up until he completed and now is one of the photographers in Zimbabwe and is living an independent life. Unfortunately, his grandmother passed on before he completed his studies.
Thank you so much for the support.
Blessings
Gideon & Jennifer