Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitator

Key People: Faides Cheysu and Evans Doygie

Recent Events

Orphan Support Programme

There are currently 10 children on the orphan support programme.  Two are in Grade 4, three in Grade 7, four in Grade 9 and one in Grade 1. They are provided with school uniforms, school fees, books, washing soap, shoe polish and a school bag.  

Gardening

The ZANGI Orphan Garden Project currently does not have anything in it yet. They hope that they can plant vegetables and sugar cane soon. They are hoping that they can obtain funds for a water pump which would be helpful to water a big area within the shortest possible time. Currently there is a stream close by where they have to fill containers to lift up the bank and carry to the garden. A pump would make the work much easier.

The photos shown are of the personal gardens and crops of the leaders in the project. Faides highlights an issue in that they are struggling to get the community involved to come and help in the farming project for the orphans as they do not have a lot of spare time after looking after their own fields. There is one boy however who has been faithfully coming to water the gardens most days.  

Piggery

They were initially doing well with the pigs and had 12 in total. However, tragedy struck one day when the pigs broke down the unit and eight ran wild into the community. Of the eight, three came back, leaving them with a total of seven pigs. From the seven, five were sold and only two remained (a male and female). These two currently have five piglets bringing them up to a total of seven again.

Personnel

Rebecca has handed in her notice at Amano School so by the end of the year she will be moving to Chifuma where she has been building a house. The ZANGI team have met to discuss if they want Rebecca to stay involved or if someone new will be added to the team to look after communication and banking duties. If Rebecca does stay on the team she will travel and stay with them for a couple weeks. 

Guardians Meeting 

There are nine new guardians of orphans who came for a meeting and who are very serious about helping the project out by working in the gardens.  

Current Issues and Challenges

COVID-19

For some time pupils stopped going to school due to the pandemic. This had adverse results as they saw an increase in child delinquency. As well as schools being closed, there were no meetings allowed so they were not able to gather the children together to support and encourage them. This resulted in some of the ZANGI supported girls getting pregnant.

Economic Challenges

With the coming of COVID and the poor economy Zambia is facing as a nation, ZANGI found it hard to manage with the finances that were sent to them. Between the time the budget was set and the money was sent (December 2020) and when they needed to pay for the children's school fees and supplies, prices had gone up and even now they continue going up by the day. This put them in a difficult position to manage to get the children their school supplies. Some things had gone up by more than 50% within a few months and every time one goes to the market, prices keep going up. In addition, things like face masks were not included in the budget but they had to make sure they bought these for the children to use as they go to school and interact with others in the community.

Comments

Currently the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Zambian Kwacha has changed such that they now receive twice the Kwacha amount than previously so going forward this will help offset the price increases and I do not feel there is a need to increase the budget here.