Fountain of Hope Foundation Report April 2022

Warmest greetings from the winter weather of Bulawayo, we are slowly getting into winter. Our farming season which was characterised by very low rainfall is over and we are now preparing for the next farming season already. We thank you so much for the support because some of our farmers harvested more than enough even in the midst of low rainfall. 

Fountain of Hope staff members and the several communities and schools that we work with, together with Peniel Centre children would like to hereby register our gratitude to Bright Hope World for the support that you are rendering to us and the downtrodden communities. Your support is undoubtedly restoring hope to hopeless people and hopeless communities. Many people who used to rely on being fed by the government are able to grow and harvest their own crops for their own consumption. Thank you so much for improving food security in our communities even during these drought years and improving the quality of life of orphans and vulnerable children in a nation that is reeling in poverty. Thank you for helping us to reduce number of street children and to assist in the provision of access to clean and safe drinking water to communities in the dry regions of Zimbabwe. Our transformation centres are amazingly bringing hope to children who have gone through a myriad of challenges such as living on the streets with no source of income, dropping out of school due to unavailability of school fees, and hunger and starvation because of food insecurity in poor families and communities. 

We have attached herein our update on how the project is doing. 

Hope for Communities

We thank God that through the support of Bright Hope World, Fountain of Hope is putting on the lights of hope and vision in the lives of young people and poor communities. There is hope for a better future in Makamure (ZIM02c), Mtshazo (ZIM02g), Mthombothemba (ZIM02a), Chirogwe (ZIM02f), Chikofa, Dube, Nemauzhe (ZIM02h) etc.  Thank you so much for your support, without it we could not have started water projects for dry communities, education assistance for children from very difficult circumstances, farming God’s way programmes for communities who have suffered food insecurity for many years, and skills training for out of school youth etc. Thank you so much.  

Fountain of Hope Staff Members and Challenges

We started the year 2022 with much excitement as we expect our skills training team to do well in their training, Peniel children to also pass with flying colours at school, our transformation centres shining the light of Jesus Christ in communities, and our garden project producing much to feed the beneficiaries and also to provide extra finances to families which used to live in very painful conditions of lack of food and finances. In the midst of this excitement our team started to be infected with COVID, our director got it on the 5th of January and unfortunately soon after being cleared of COVID, the doctors found out that he had meningitis. He had to be taken to the hospital where he was admitted for some days because he was seriously ill. We thank God that God touched him and healed him, and he is now out of the hospital.

Apart from Gideon, Mr H became the latest person to be infected with COVID towards the end of March. The challenges on Mr H came at the time when many communities were calling us as a team to talk about the principles of farming God’s way. This came about because our farmers did well in this season where communities received very little rainfall especially in region 5 of Zimbabwe. Our farmers from Makamure, Mandiva, Mtshazo and Dube villages did quite well in their fields and were able to harvest something. Our two agricultural coordinators have been doing a splendid job of working with communities and the AREX officers of the government. Working with the government officials made all things easier for us, we were able to keep on doing the work even during the time of by-elections in Zimbabwe.  

Foundations for Farming

Our aim is to increase food security in downtrodden dry areas where people have suffered hunger and starvation for many years. This season, people were trained in Makamure community, Chikofa, Dube and Nemauzhe communities. The season has not been good because the communities and villages received very little rainfall, especially the region that we are operating in which is the natural region 5 of Zimbabwe. We are very grateful to Bright Hope World because those farmers who practiced Foundations for Farming managed to harvest something from their fields. Those who were the first people to put down their crops with the first rains got food for their families even though it was dry from January this year up to mid-April.

40 of the trained farmers got more than enough for their families and will be able to share food with those who don’t have enough. The only place where we do not have anyone who harvested something from their fields is Chikofa community because they are our new community and are still learning the principles. The harvest that the 40 people got from their fields boosted the appetite for people to learn more about Farming God’s Way.

We ran a Farmer’s Field Day which was attended by three Chiefs from three different communities, and they left the place convinced that this is the only way to overcome hunger and poverty in region 5 of Zimbabwe. All these chiefs from Chivi district have been inviting our trainers to their communities to train their people. It is also surprising that our farmers from Mtshazo’s Dube village did well in this season even after receiving very little rainfall. 

We are very grateful to Bright Hope World for supporting this project and for ensuring that our trainers spend time with people training them. We have already started training people for the next farming season and people have been coming enthusiastically to all our trainings because they believe that this is the way to fight out hunger and poverty from their communities. 

Transformation Centres

These are wonderful centres that have brought transformation to hundreds of young children and teenagers. The centres are there to provide support in terms of food, education, skills, identity documents, improve the health status of orphans and vulnerable children, counselling and all other services to ensure that the hopeless children have hope for the future. We thank God that through the support from Bright Hope we are running successfully three transformation centres and supporting over 300 children and young people. The three transformational centres are based in three different communities; Mtshazo in Gwanda, Mthombothemba in Umguza district, and Makamure in Chivi district.

The number of children has been and will continue to increase at all our transformation centres due to various challenges that we are going through as a nation; the past two years with Covid left many children vulnerable especially those whose parents had gone to South Africa to look for employment. We have so many child-headed families in all three of these areas because either the parents died in South Africa or just disappeared leaving children to fend for themselves. Our transformation centre staff members do not have time to rest as they not only provide food to these children but work extra hard to ensure that they are protected in the homes where they stay. 

Apart from Covid challenges, our national economic situation has left many people unemployed hence we have so many street children on our streets and these children are left to live a very reckless life drinking beer, abusing drugs and stealing from adults at their tender ages. The transformation centres are doing a wonderful job of rehabilitating some of these children to become well behaved young people who have a hope for the future.  

Extensions

Our transformation centres have added the following apart from just providing food, running psycho-social support programmes, providing health assistance etc.: 

1) Running Pre-school/ Grade 0 school               
We are running these schools for orphans and vulnerable children who cannot afford to pay school fees at our government schools. These children have got the potential to do great in life hence we have initiated this programme. We have 80 children as part of the grade 0 programme. 

2) Running Bridging School for School drop-outs
The bridging school caters for children who dropped out of school due to a lack of school fees because either their grandparents or guardians were not able to pay fees for them. They come to the transformation centre to be helped with education and will be taken back to the conventional school upon graduation from the bridging school. Our bridging school has 18 students all who are doing different grades, some of them have never been even to grade one in their lives.  

Skills Training

Carpentry Training  

In order to reduce youth delinquency in our communities and towns and also to provide hope to so many unemployed young people, we initiated skills training for out of school young people. We are so grateful for this initiative because it is really going a long way in reducing the number of young people who are involved in drug abuse and acts of violence in the communities that we work with.

One guardian of one of the young men who has been part of the training was completely amazed by the changes that this young man is exhibiting. We do not only give them practical carpentry skills but train them to know God and make Him known. We have named this training initiative, Skills for Mission and this is because their biggest mission is to make Christ be known. They did their attachment in different places as well as doing different things apart from just carpentry like tiling.

We are glad to let you know that our first group of students graduated at the beginning of this month. Some of them have already started their co-operatives where they are now earning an income with the skills which they got through the training. We have just started a new class which is going to take two years and not the one year which we took with the first class. We would like to diversify into other skills like building etc so that we may open wide the prospects of our young people having something to do in life. We thank you so much that through your support we are slowly opening up opportunities for young people as well as helping them to change their lifestyles.

Other Skills

Our desire is to really help as many young people as possible hence we had to embark on skills training. At the beginning of this year we contacted the Ministry of Youth Development in Zimbabwe showing that by training some of our young people in skills that will help them to make a better living it will help this nation that has got high unemployment. We agreed that we will pay a minimum amount of money for them to train some of our vulnerable young people. We are glad to let you know that as from January this year, some young people started to be trained in building as well as catering. With these skills these youngsters are capable of starting their own businesses or even work for other people, thereby stopping the life of spending time drinking beer, beating up people and prostitution. These young people, just like the carpentry course, are going to do the training for two years, for we really want them to excel in these skills.  

Peniel Centre (ZIM02)

The Peniel Centre continues to positively shape the future of young people who at one time were abandoned, abused, and left alone to live their own lives. Thank you so much Bright Hope World for the support that you are rendering to these wonderful children. Your support is undoubtedly going a long way in enabling these children to go to school, have food on the table on a daily basis, as well as clothes and school uniforms. Peniel Centre desires to provide not just food, clothes and accommodation, but quality education that will make them live a better life after living in the home. For example, we are so glad that one of our girls who did her advanced level last year did well in her exams. 

Nqo (pictured here) came to Peniel Centre after the death of her father. Soon after the death of her father, her mother dumped her in the town of Bulawayo where she was picked up by well-wishers who eventually brought her to Peniel Centre. We thank God for all the staff members of Peniel Centre who did a great job of enabling this child to have a home, family, hope and a future. She is one of the girls who passed the advanced level exams this year and is looking forward to going to university this year to study law. She would like to be a lawyer after university and eventually get into politics in Zimbabwe. 

Apart from caring for the children at Peniel, we have also been running self-sustaining projects to get nutritious food for the children. Our garden has been doing well and it is only the broiler chicken project that has not been doing very well and we have just stopped it because we were really running at a loss. The ceasing of the chicken project led us to start a fish project which we believe will go a long way in making the children of Peniel Centre have better white meat. Thank you so much for supporting this home. 

Access to Water for Drinking and Productive Purposes 

Chamanhanzva High School

Our desire is to see people in dry areas manage to get clean water for drinking and productive purposes hence we have been doing boreholes and building small dams to harvest water.

Chamanhanzva is a school in Chivi District and is situated in Chief Nemauzhe area. The school has 679 students and over 20 teachers and is surrounded by a village which does not have a source of water. The closest river to the school is 10 km away while the nearest dam is 15 km away. Teachers and school children were getting water from the nearest river on the riverbed, where they were sharing water with domestic and wild animals. This school is actually in an area where it is so remote such that there are no shops for people to buy food from. This is what prompted us to decide to be a blessing to this community, the distance they were travelling to get water was too far, and teachers did not want to be at this school because of its remoteness and lack of water. 

We are glad to let you know that this school has plenty of water from the borehole that we drilled there, and the community is also benefitting from this borehole. The school head is so persuaded that more teachers will come to the school because there is water now. Our team is going to assist the school in the next few months to have an orchard as well as a vegetable garden. Some of their students walk for 16km a day and we believe that once the garden has been established the school will be able to grow food to feed these vulnerable children who come from faraway places.

Thank you so much   
Fountain of Hope Foundation staff members