Fountain of Hope Foundation Project Report April 2021

Overview from the Directors Desk 

2021 started with a myriad of challenges in the nation of Zimbabwe and the biggest being the challenge of COVID-19. We started the year under the second wave of COVID-19 which was more powerful and deadly unlike the first wave. This new wave caused the government to swiftly introduce a strict lockdown and the closure of all land borders. This brought in more economic challenges to the already dead economy as people began to lose their jobs and their different sources of income. Some companies had to completely close and are still struggling to restart again meaning that many families have been rendered economically poor due to COVID-19. We began to experience an increase in the number of destitute children especially in Mthombothemba area where there are now so many child headed households as parents have had to leave their children on their own and wandered around the country looking for greener pastures. In Makamure area one woman died while giving birth to twins due to hypertension after she came back pregnant from South Africa to a land where there was no source of income at all.

We are so grateful to our team for a splendid job that they have been doing in communities where people have been going through diverse challenges. Our team has been on the ground still training people to focus on farming even in the midst of challenges. Our team would train people and then quickly come back to Bulawayo to be tested for COVID-19 before going back to be with the people. Thank you also Bright Hope World for all the support, if it had not been for your support we could not have achieved what we have achieved so far. Through your support and partnership we continue to shine the light of Jesus Christ through giving hope to the hopeless.

We are so grateful to our agriculture trainer who really has and is doing a great job of lifting up people from the doldrums of poverty and hunger. It is my pleasure to report that the people of Mtshabezi have harvested food enough to feed their families for the entire year for the first time since 1947 according to the reports. For the first time after many years an agricultural field day was successfully held in the community of Mtshazo. This was done to multiply the program to the whole ward 4 of Gwanda district. We thank God that the people who used to reel in hunger have got enough food to feed their families for the whole year, thanks to the agricultural officer for his dedication and commitment to teaching people to follow the new way of farming that has improved the yield in people’s fields.

There is great hope that Foundations for Farming, our Transformation Centres, water projects as well as Peniel Centre are undoubtedly bringing hope to the hopeless. Our programs are doing wonders in moving people from the animistic worldview to live according to a Biblical worldview. For instance, in Makamure community the chief turned to God and abolished all other ancestral rituals which they used to perform in the community. People who used to share water sources with animals now are able to get clean and safe water for drinking and productive purposes. We are very much indebted to Bright Hope World for all these positive changes that are taking place in these communities. Please find below a more detailed report on the programs; their successes and challenges: 

Recent Events

Foundations for Farming

250 people or families were trained altogether by Fountain of Hope this season and all these farmers were equipped not only with knowledge but also with seeds to plant into their fields. We thank God that all these farmers despite the challenges of COVID-19 received graciously the training that our agriculture officer trained them. There was much hunger to practice farming God’s way in all the kind of crops they were equipped with. Our greatest desire in doing this is to glorify God by improving and increasing food security in poor, dry and remote areas of Zimbabwe. Our focus areas are the villages in natural region 5 of Zimbabwe, which is regarded as the poorest and driest of all regions in the country; the region is known for hunger, starvation, poverty, poor education, underdevelopment etc. It is in this region that we decided to work and walk with the communities in increasing food security and in fighting out hunger and starvation. We are doing this slowly with one village at a time and we believe that sooner rather than later we will have influenced the whole of natural region 5 to practice farming God’s way in their fields. We are so persuaded that with this tool of farming God’s way, we will be able to make the population of region 5 have food in their homes. 

This year we trained people from four villages of the 37 in Makamure community (ZIM02c), as well as two villages from Nemauzhe community (ZIM02h), and Mtshazo village of Matabeleland South province of Zimbabwe (ZIM02g). All these villages have not harvested a meaningful harvest for many years and we are glad to report that this year through Foundations for Farming they harvested food that is enough to feed their families. The people of Mtshazo were taught for the first time to grow crops like groundnuts and roundnuts as well as cow peas and much to our amazement they did very well in their fields. This prompted us to invite the whole district together with the officials from the district to come over and see for themselves that this program works. This is our humble way of multiplying the program and many people are buying into the idea of using Foundations for Farming in their fields.

Here are the comments from Chief Makamure, “On behalf of all villages under my chieftainship and chiefs surrounding my area, I would like to hereby appreciate Fountain of Hope Foundation for bringing this program right onto our doorsteps. If this program had not come to our community, we could still be using our conventional way of farming which has not to be working for us for many years. Our community has been reeling in poverty and hunger for a long time and as I am the leader of this community, I want each and every person of this community to practice this way of farming in their fields”.    

We are so grateful to God that we were able to run field days in all the communities as a way of making many other people know the program. This program has undoubtedly changed people’s lives in these communities. We are looking forward to move on to the other villages in the same areas and thereby multiplying the program in the next season. 

Peniel Centre (ZIM02)

This centre continues to provide a home, family, hope and a future to orphans and vulnerable children who are homeless, abandoned and abused. We are so grateful to Bright Hope World for all the support that is being rendered to this children’s home. The centre is providing hope and creating a better future for 26 young people who all come from different, difficult circumstances.

For instance, one of the boys at Peniel centre was born out of incest and both the parents didn’t like this gift from God and decided to abandon him in the bush. We thank God that some passers-by heard the cries of this child and went to pick him up.  He was brought to Peniel Centre after being picked up by the people who saw him. He was brought to Peniel Centre literally with nothing and even with no hope, no future and no family. We thank God that through your support that this young man has found a home, a family and has got high hopes for the future. He would like to be  a professional football player and would want to plough back into the community that helped him. He is now going to school and is currently in high school. 

The above is one of the many stories that all the Peniel Centre children carry and we thank God and thank Bright Hope World for partnering with us in creating a better future for these wonderful young people. We are able to feed these children and send them to school as well as to health centres for health care through the support that comes from you. They also have clothes, and are always assured of monthly toiletries from the support that comes from you. Thank you so much for the support. 

Apart from providing accommodation to these wonderful children, Peniel Centre runs a garden where the principles of Foundations for Farming are taught to our young people. The garden helps the centre to produce some food so that we don’t buy everything from the shops. As well as the garden, we are also running a chicken project together with a cattle project which both are going a long way in making the centre to be self-sustainable. 

Challenges: The biggest challenge that we have been facing at Peniel Centre for the past 5 months is a lack of electricity. Our electricity cables were stolen by thieves in December 2020 and our government’s Department of Electricity is failing to restore power back to us and other neighbours who are affected by this sad development. We have been using generators to pump water as well as to provide lights at night but this temporary solution is proving to be very costly.  

The only solution that we think is very sustainable in the long run is to use solar power for the centre, for both the lights as well as the provision of power to pump water for drinking and other productive purposes. Apart from solar power, the other option would be to buy cables to replace the ones which were stolen so that the electricity supply authority may restore power to the centre. 

Skills Training Program

We are glad to report that our Skills Training Program started off at the beginning of March 2021 with 21 students. All these young people come from very different, difficult and painful backgrounds. We thank God that this training is giving these youngsters wings to fly in a nation where unemployment is very high and where there are very few opportunities of even starting a business. We are happy to report that we got a very skilled person to run the project and we actually have seen the hand of God in changing and transforming lives of young people who already had lost hope for the future.

This carpentry school has both girls and boys, who all are below 23. Most of them were already involved in drug abuse and this is because they didn’t have anything to do hence they had to engross themselves in abusing drugs and drinking beer. The training program has already assisted a local school which had broken chairs and benches through repairing all the broken furniture at the school. The school has got nice chairs, benches and clean chalk boards which were repaired by these 21 students. One of the community leaders had this to say about this Skills Training Program: 

"I would like to say thank you to Fountain of Hope for coming up with the program which for me is rehabilitating our youth and young people who have been shoved deep into the pangs of substance abuse. I have witnessed these few days, your training changing these youngsters and I believe they will continue to change and surely are going to be people who will transform our society. As leaders of the community we are so much impressed by this program and our wish is for it to be able to take more people than the number that you are taking at the moment." 

Challenges: Electricity remains the biggest challenge at Peniel Centre at the moment so the training school is not able to use any electrical carpentry tools currently. Electricity has stalled a lot of things which the team could be doing. They cannot run the welder again because of the electricity issue. Again, a solution here would be to install solar equipment so that we completely use solar power to run all the projects at Peniel Centre. 

Transformation Centres

We currently have three operating transformation centres in the communities that we work in. These are Mthombothemba (ZIM02a), Makamure and Mtshazo transformation centres. These were established with the mandate of developing a well-developed child socially, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. This is achieved through the integration of various programs that seek to empower children and youth from hard places and their families. We run psycho-social support camps, daily feeding programs, provision of educational assistance, legal support (especially in the area of acquiring birthcertificates), and the running of Self-Help projects to improve the household income of orphans and vulnerable families etc. 

We do have 20 young people from the Makamure transformation centre who are going through a 2 year course in Agriculture. Our greatest desire is to help these young people to acquire land which they can use after the training to make a living through farming. This group comprises of girls and boys who are so hungry to improve their livelihood. Apart from these ones Fountain of Hope is assisting 35 more young people from the community of Makamure to remain in school. Our psycho-social support program is reaching out to 200 orphans and vulnerable children from the community of Makamure. 

In Mthombothemba, our transformation centre has experienced an increase in the number of children who need support. We used only to feed and support 60 children on a daily basis but now the number has grown so big that on some days our team feeds over 100 children. We do not only feed these children but we try by all means to give them hope through the ministry of the word of God. We realised that most of these children need counselling and so we have engaged the services of a full time counsellor to provide therapy to some of these children. It was through the services of the counsellor that we discovered that some of the children were sexually abused by people close to them or those who live with them. Our social worker is doing a great job of providing healing to these children while the Zimbabwe Republic Police also are doing a great job of bringing to book the culprits. We have also started running sports galas with the aim of conscientising the community on what is child abuse. This program has led us to the formation of strong child protection committees in the community with children also represented in the committee. Thank you so much Bright Hope World for partnering with us in brightening the future of these wonderful children. 

In Mtshazo community we are running a pre-school at this transformation centre where children are provided with education by our teacher. At the moment this transformation centre is serving 42 children and young people from the community of Mtshazo in Mtshabezi area of Zimbabwe.

We are working on training more teachers for all our transformation centres. So far we have got five people undergoing training in teaching (at one of the government institutes) and in running Bridging Schools (these are educational centres at our Transformation centres for young people who either have dropped out of school or have never been in school before) with the aim of increasing the literacy rate amongst children from hard places. We are also training our own Social Worker who will work with community leaders in the targeted communities to improve the welfare of children from difficult circumstances. 

Water For Life Program

This program is aimed at assisting communities have access to clean and safe water for drinking and productive purposes. We work in the dry natural region 5 of Zimbabwe where water is like white gold to those who find it. Our desire is for each and every village to have access to a water source within their community or village. Since we work in very dry, poor, drought prone communities, our aim is to help these communities to increase food security and improve household income through harvesting water for productive purposes. To achieve this, we drill and install boreholes either with solar powered pumps or bush pumps to help communities to harvest ground water. In these dry areas, one will have to drill to a depth of between 70 and 100 metres to get enough water for the community. In some places, you will drill deep down to that depth and still get nothing.  

We have seen our water program improving the quality of life in villages like Madzivire, Mandiva, Mtshazo, and Chiwanza high school and we desire to keep on at least providing one borehole per year to a community that we will be working in.

Our team is currently working on providing the people, teachers and school children of Nemauzhe primary school with a borehole that will provide water for agricultural purposes as well as for drinking. The borehole site has already been sited and the drilling is going to take place on the 26th of April. The delay was caused by a poor road network to the community so the community has been working very hard to open up the road for the drilling rig to reach the intended area. 

Nemauzhe (ZIM02h) is one the most dry areas in the whole district of Chivi and our team is praying for water to be found on the site where the borehole is going to be drilled. If water is found on this place, the dry school will be changed completely and this will be a move in the direction of making these communities green. The school will be able to utilise the land they have to produce food for the children. They will sell the surplus to cover school fees for children from vulnerable families. 

Thank you so much Bright Hope World for supporting this project. We would like to ask you to pray with us that these dry places be turned into rivers that flow with water throughout the year. 

Livestock

This program’s aim is to reduce poverty amongst vulnerable families from the region 5 of Zimbabwe. Naturally animals are supposed to do very well in this region and this is because it's dry and many livestock favour dry places. The only challenge is that there are no grazing pastures for goats and cattle due to overpopulation as well as indiscriminately cutting down of trees. The land is slowly turning into a desert because people in these areas use firewood for cooking and warming themselves during the winter season. This has not worked so much in favour of our livestock production project and we saw a number of animals dying of hunger and diseases especially in communities like Makamure, Nemauzhe and Mandiva. The only communities where animals are doing well are Mthombothemba and amazingly Mtshazo even though this one is turning also slowly into a desert. This year there was a deadly disease that affected goats, chickens and cattle especially again in the three main communities many livestock died.

We tried our best to help the people by running trainings as well as purchasing vaccines but all this did not stop the disease from killing the animals. The disease is called January disease. Some families were left literally with nothing from chickens to cows and we can only start to plan to restock again after we are sure of the causes of this diseases and how to prevent it. This really was the biggest challenge of this program. 

Trees

Our team desires to glorify God by turning dry communities like Mthombothemba, Makamure and Mtshazo areas, green. We stand on the word of God in Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

We have so far started teaching and training school children together with parents on the importance of growing trees to protect our environment from all causes of environmental degradation. We have planted fruit and different kinds of indigenous trees in the community of Makamure as well as equipping the community with information about the different kinds of trees they may grow in their community.

Apart from that we initiated community based clean-up campaigns as a way of removing all kinds of litter in the community. It is a blessing to see all these changes taking place in the community and even at the business centres within the area. 

Our biggest challenge on this endeavour is getting fences to protect these trees from animals, both domestic and wild. The community would like to have an orchard as well as a plantation of exotic trees which will help them be sustainably in the community. 

Comments

Thank you again to Bright Hope World for touching and transforming lives here in Zimbabwe. 

With much gratitude
Gideon & Jennifer Chishamba