Fountain of Hope Progress Report August 2018

Fountain of Hope and the leaders of all the communities that are being transformed would like to hereby extend our heartfelt gratitude to Bright Hope World for all the unwavering support being rendered to community projects. We are grateful together with communities that are showing great signs of change even in the midst of challenges that Zimbabwe is going through. Your support is unreservedly lifting up communities out of the doldrums of hunger and poverty and is bringing a ray of hope to orphans and vulnerable children from these communities. There is great improvement of food security in some of the communities that we have been working in for the past three years, an increase of orphans and vulnerable children who are now attending school and also an increase of health deliveries in some of the communities in region 5 of Zimbabwe which we are working in.

Child marriages have been abolished in communities like Makamure and Mthombothemba and young girls are now respected in the communities. This is going a long way in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in these communities. The communities have got very strong child protection committees which are working flat out to ensure that children’s rights are upheld. Children are encouraged to go to school, acquire birth-certificates, provided with psycho-social support to bring complete healing to them and the Transformation Centres that we established in these communities are doing a great job in providing such to the children. Our Transformation Centres have decreased the number of children who die of HIV/AIDS and have increased the number of children who are on HIV/AIDS health drugs.

Thank you so much Bright Hope World that you are partnering with us in improving the quality of life in these communities. Please find herein below the report on Mthombothemba.  

Recent Events

Situation in Zimbabwe

On the 30th of July Zimbabweans held parliamentary and presidential elections and the ruling party was declared winner but the main opposition party has contested the results. Following this announcement tension arose in the capital city that resulted in the death of six people and hundreds more were left injured when the army fired live ammunition on fleeing unarmed civilians. The irony of it is that in November last year when the army ousted Robert Mugabe who ruled Zimbabwe for almost four decades people went on to the streets and hugged the soldiers in celebrations. A few months down the road the army has returned shooting at the very citizens who hugged them! Zimbabweans are yearning for real, tangible, long lasting, positive change not the piecemeal we have seen so far. The church in Zimbabwe is getting united to pray for this great nation to receive its salvation.

All these happenings in the country have affected the economy of the country and we have seen inflation rising up again, goods and services are now very expensive and our bond dollar which is supposed to be equivalent to a US$ has been devalued by over 50%. This has prompted many organisations to decide to open bank accounts outside the country and Fountain of Hope is also doing the same thing.  

Community Leaders Training

Fountain of Hope spent the months of June and July training 25 community leaders and church leaders on how to facilitate a church and community transformation process. These leaders were pulled from all the communities that Fountain of Hope works with. The training took place in the community of Makamure and all these leaders are expected to go back to their communities and work with their communities on how to come up with a 5 year action plan for their communities. The 25 were awarded with certificates after the training and the graduation was attended by the chief and the councillors of the area.  

Mthombothemba Community

This is a community that is going through great transformation because of the impact of Fountain of Hope in this community. It used to be the poorest of all communities in Matabeleland North province of Zimbabwe. It had a high child mortality rate, was the third community in the whole country of Zimbabwe with the highest number of school drop-outs each year, the main primary school used to have 0% pass rate every year, it used to harbour criminals, thieves, robbers were found in this community, it is one of the communities that had some children who died of hunger and starvation, and disunity amongst the community leaders caused this community not to develop. 

Fountain of Hope came into this community which literally was walking in the corridors of hopelessness, with many of her children turning into prostitution, while the boys were becoming robbers. Whenever there was a burglary in town the police would come to this community to look for thieves. Orphans and vulnerable children did not have anyone to take care of them and many of them were dying of hunger. 

We are so much grateful to you and to God to report that the community that was down has become a reference point for other communities to learn from. Fountain of Hope has worked so hard to prevent the spread of and reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS in this community through running community dialogues, Foundations for Farming program, livestock production, transformation centre, water and sanitation programs, as well as running community gardens. Please see below more of the impact and challenges of these programs one by one: 

Foundations for Farming and Community Gardens

The aim of this program in this community is to break the cycle of poverty through increasing food security at both the family and community level. The three pillars of our program this year have been; PRODUCE, CONNECT and DEVELOP. We endeavour to see the members of the community producing enough to feed their families and also to connect them with the market for their produce. Not only that but also to develop them to produce agricultural products that are wanted by the market. We also desire to see these farmers developing their farming skills, potential, and their fields to produce products that can sustain their families and the community. Through our Foundations for Farming program we managed to train almost the whole community through the running of community field days. In these field days we connected the farmers to seed houses, the government structures, the market, and also connected them to one another. We are working on finding ways of adding value to the produce from the gardens so that the community can gain more.  

This year we trained more people than all the other years in this community as we kept on training even during the winter season. We ran four community field days where we trained over 200 people from the whole community of Mthombothemba. We are also grateful to report that the community got a very good harvest this year and most of our farmers are going to have food that will last them up until the next harvest. This is really a miracle that a community that used to go through lack and hunger every year is now becoming one of the best in the whole region of Matabeleland. 

• Foundations for Farming and garden projects are going a long way in making families in Mthombothemba have enough food to feed themselves, it is breaking the chains of poverty in the community
• Foundations for Farming is cementing family relationships as men are now able to stay at home working in their fields rather than leaving their families while they go out of the country to seek greener pastures
• It has worked well in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS since families are now able to live together as families
• Many children are able to grow in intact families where both parents are present 

Livestock Production Project

This project started with goats that was supported by Bright Hope World. The goats have been a blessing to orphan families since they provide very rich milk to infants and young children who are going through struggles of malnourishment. This project has been evolving over the past period of time and has generated other projects that have to do with livestock. Out of the goat project the community of Mthombothemba is now running a cattle project. The cattle project is a community project whereby the cows are looked after by the community leaders for the benefit of the vulnerable members of the community. It is really a blessing that this community wants to take care of its own people. The community wants to take care of its elderly people, the orphans and vulnerable children.

Apart from the cattle project, the goat project has also evolved into a broiler rearing project. 20 people so far from the community have undergone training on how to effectively raise up broilers for the market in town. Nine of these people are raising up broiler chickens for the market. This project is also one of the projects that Fountain of Hope is running to break the yoke of poverty and to improve the economic status of poor families. 

Some of the notable impacts of the livestock project are:
• The training has given people knowledge on how to raise up livestock especially broilers
• The economic status of the poor is improving especially amongst those who are rearing broilers
• It is going a long way in reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS on widows and orphans as they are able to have an income for survival
• A livestock farmers group was formed which does not only focus on broiler raising but also on enriching marriages amongst the married, empowering one another on how to parent teenagers,  HIV/AIDS knowledge also is passed on amongst the members of this group. 

Challenges 
• Chickens want to drink clean water and it is a challenge for some of our farmers who do not have boreholes close to their homes
• The market sometimes gets flooded thereby forcing the price of birds to go down and eventually making the farmers to run at a loss
• The cattle project has very few cows, so very few orphan and vulnerable families are benefitting at the moment from this project 

Ways to Consolidate the Project
• Training more people from the community and empowering them to start the chicken rearing project to flood the market with broilers from Mthombothemba only
• There is a need to have one more borehole in the community to strengthen the ones that are there already
• Establishment of Fountain of Hope abattoir and broiler outlets to cut out the middlemen who end up eating from the farmers’ profit
• Merging the garden project and broiler projects so that one project helps the other 

Transformation Centre

This project aims at developing orphans and vulnerable children socially, physically, emotionally, materially and spiritually. The transformation centre is a place where children’s holistic needs are met. Mthombothemba transformation centre has got 60 children, most of them are coming from single parent homes, orphan families, squatter families, and vulnerable children (mostly with parents who run away to other nations for greener pastures but are not taking care of their children back home). The sick are taken to hospital, school fees are provided for those who cannot afford them, psycho-social support camps and interventions are run to support these children, children and even their guardians are helped to obtain birth-certificates and all kinds of identity documents at the transformation centre. Both children and young adults are provided with life-skills at this transformation centre so that they are able to have something that can help them to earn a living when they have grown up. 

The transformation centre has got 60 young children who are benefitting directly on a daily basis with food, a place to study, school fees, hospital assistance, life skills development, assistance with identity documents. Six out of the target of 10 young people were sent for skills training this year from Mthombothemba. All six are doing very well in their training and we are looking forward to see them starting their own businesses after the training. Nine young ladies who have got children were assisted to get birth identity documents so they will be able to assist their own children to acquire these documents.

Impact of Transformation Centre
• It has increased school participation amongst the orphans and vulnerable children
• It increased the pass rate at the local primary school which used to have a pass rate of between 0 and 3% every year
• Some children and even their guardians who did not have birth-certificates now have these documents
• Many children who are HIV/AIDS are on treatment because the orphan volunteers who work at the transformation centre take these children to hospital on a daily basis
• There are great signs of healing that most of these children are exhibiting due to psycho-social support programs 

Challenges 
• Some children are quite a distance away from the transformation centre
• There is no trained social worker at the transformation centre
• There is no electricity as well as internet facility for these children to be able to research like their counterparts in town. This completely disadvantages them at school since the new Zimbabwean school curriculum encourages children to use the internet to research on different subjects.  

Ways to Consolidate the Transformation Centre
• There is need for the introduction of an internet facility for the children to be able to study and research at the transformation centre
• The agricultural skills development program at the transformation centre should be upgraded so that the children can also learn how to process agricultural products, moving products from the field to the market 
• Laptops and tablets should be provided for the children so that the transformation centre aligns itself with the new Zimbabwe education curriculum
• More mobile clinics should be run at the centre to cut the costs of children going to town for medical attention
• Since some of the children are slow learners, there is a need to have special teachers at the transformation centre for children who need special attention
• The centre to be upgraded to provide a skills development centre for those who have finished school. 

Personal Stories

Foundations for Farming and Gardens

Gogo maSibanda and her husband who is in his early 80s have been residents of this community since they were born. They have never seen people of this community harvesting much or even building up granaries to store harvested food. The only thing that they remember is how people would go to the government and NGOs to ask for food hand-outs. They, like all other people, had already given up on farming. Thank God for Fountain of Hope who brought a new way of farming which is called conservation farming. Thank God for Bright Hope World for supporting this program.

This family welcomed this way of farming with both hands as they really wanted to come out of poverty. They don’t have any other sources of income other than just farming. The family lives with five vulnerable children whose parents ran away from the problems of Zimbabwe and have never came back again. Foundations for Farming brought life to this family as they are now able to harvest food from their fields as well as getting fresh veggies from their fields. The vulnerable children in this family are now able to go to school with food in their stomachs. Gogo maSibanda might have children who disappeared into thin air and left her with five young children to look after but the gardens and Foundations for Farming are making her to survive even without any support from her children as well as from the government. They have for first time this year built up a food storehouse since they harvested maize that is enough to feed her family for the whole year. 

Livestock Production Project

Killion (the gentleman in a hat) used to work at one of the mines in Zimbabwe and he could look after his family very well from the wages he was getting from the mine. Things changed when the mine stopped working in early 2000. He packed his bags and left the mine compound for his rural home in Mthombothemba. In Mthombothemba this man and his family began to find it difficult to make ends meet. He could not afford to send his wonderful children to school because there was no source of income. 

Thank God this man met Fountain of Hope who taught him how to practice arming God’s way in his fields and we are glad to report that he is one of the best farmers in the community of Mthombothemba. Apart from farming this man was also sent by Fountain of Hope to be trained on how to raise up broilers for the market. In July this man was voted the best broiler producer amongst small scale producers in the region of Matabeleland. He has the potential to do greater things in these projects that he is running. He is now able to send his children to school and he believes God that he will be able to go far in this project. 

Transformation Centre

Sphiwe (gift) never got to know her biological father and her mother died before this girl started to go to school. After the death of her mother she was left in the custody of her maternal grandmother who does not have any source of income at all. The grandmother is old and she cannot work for this girl. The Mthombothemba transformation centre came in to assist the grandmother to look after this girl. The goats which the grandmother was given went a long way in making this girl and her grandmother have food at home. The transformation centre provided food during the day for this girl to be able to attend classes on a daily basis at school. This girl is one of the intelligent girls at school and the transformation centre is going a long way in making the potential of this girl be realised. Apart from education support she was also assisted to obtain a birth-certificate and this means that she can participate in public events like all other children who have got parents. 

In this picture she was asked what she would like to send to other people in the world and she wrote happiness. Thank you Bright Hope World for brightening the future of these children.  

Comments

The Fountain of Hope team is very much grateful to Bright Hope World for all the support that you are rendering to the community of Mthombothemba and other communities.

With much gratitude
Gideon & Jennifer Chishamba (for FHF team)