Zimbabwe

Chiedza Child Care Centre

Chiedza works amongst the poorest of the poor from three urban townships near Harare. Most activities revolve around its Child Care Centre that was originally established in 2001 as a hospice for children dying of HIV. Immediately after the founders started, however, they realized that it would be better and more cost-effective to take a broader, more preventative approach by reaching out to children in the community while they are still relatively healthy. Chiedza began implementing programs with SLF support in 2006, growing its beneficiary base from 125 children to over 1500. Quality-care remains the organization’s driving force, despite innumerable difficulties caused by the collapse of Zimbabwe’s infrastructure and economy.

Today, Chiedza has two main client groups: orphaned children and the grandmothers who take care of them. Chiedza (which means “dawn’s early light” in Shona) provides its beneficiaries with a pre-school, psychosocial and nutritional support, medical screening and assistance, after-school and out-of-school children’s activities, educational assistance, children’s camps, and community outreach. Special care is provided to 60 children who are living with HIV, and there are many innovative programs. For example, Chiedza aims to build the capacity of grandparent-caregivers through training in child-care, income-supplementation activities and herbal gardening (using medicinal herbs at the Centre’s own garden as a demonstration plot). Sport and camp activities are provided because they offer hope and joy to the children. School fees and tuition payments underwrite the education of especially talented and needy primary and secondary schoolchildren. Older children are weaned off Chiedza assistance with livelihood skills, small business training and access to start-up loans. To sustain this holistic program, SLF funding provides staff development activities and an annual planning retreat.

Farm Orphan Support Trust of Zimbabwe

Life in Zimbabwe is hard under any circumstances, but especially for children and young people affected by HIV in farm communities. Yet here is where FOST focuses its efforts, believing that orphaned children have the best opportunity for development within a family group, without sibling separation, in an environment that is familiar to them and where they have the opportunity to learn their culture first-hand. With SLF support, FOST has been able to help about 800 orphans and vulnerable children annually, most of whom live in very poor households headed by grandmothers.

FOST builds the capacity of the community to identify and solve its own problems. To maximize access to local services and ensure child protection, they liaise closely with village heads, church leaders and local government representatives. For example, FOST gives block grants to local farm-based primary schools in return for their pledge to waive school fees for orphans who have either been forced out of school or who are at risk of having to drop out. Older youth receive basic training in vocational skills, small-business management, sexual reproductive health and good leadership. While emergency assistance can be provided, FOST tries to identify opportunities for self-reliance within a household, such as gardening and income generating activities. FOST also integrates psychosocial support as part of all their services and training. The SLF supports staffing costs proportionate to the level-of-effort in these activities.

Hope Tariro Trust

Hoping to fill the gaps that NGOs working with HIV/AIDS prevention and mitigation couldn’t, Hope Tariro Trust (HTT) set up shop in 2003. Working with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Trust runs an integrated orphan care programme in the Masvingo district of Zimbabwe by providing psychosocial, educational, livestock and healthcare support.

As part of its ongoing support to orphans and other vulnerable children, Hope Tariro Trust recently expanded its programme to include services for grandmothers. As a result, they now benefit from training workshops on a variety of issues, including HIV/AIDS, children’s rights, inheritance laws and psychosocial support. Upon receiving training on livestock management and animal health, grannies also receive chickens and guinea fowl to raise and sell. After six months, livestock are passed onto other vulnerable households for similar efforts. 

What’s more, the Trust programme provides care facilitators with proper instruction on child protection and participation, provides school fees to secondary school students. Children who show promise in primary school are encouraged to pursue higher quality education with support from Hope Tariro Trust. Finally, HTT provides play centres and provides  nutritious food to people living with the virus.

Midlands AIDS Service Organisation (MASO)

Midlands AIDS Service Organization (MASO) targets Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province with its population of 1.7 million. Although MASO faces huge challenges due to Zimbabwe’s economic and political collapse, MASO carries out the following programs: community home-based care; support for orphaned and vulnerable children; education on gender and HIV  prevention; counselling; herbal and nutrition gardens; economic strengthening, and the capacity building of small local groups. 

The SLF helps MASO implement a programme of improved care and protection for orphans and their caregivers.  To reach the households in greatest need, MASO works through ten granny support groups that are spread across both rural and urban areas. The project provides psychosocial support, establishes and strengthens fifteen child protection committees, and promotes a group saving-scheme and various income-generating activities. It also builds the capacity of 30 outreach volunteers who provide training and one-on-one re-enforcement.  Participating grandmothers from all ten groups come together three times a year for mutual support, training, and input into the project’s ongoing activities. The SLF also provides some administrative support, including one salary and the project’s monitoring and evaluation system.

Musasa Project

Traditionally the Musasa tree provided cooling refreshing shade to weary travellers during or at the end of a hot journey. It serves as a temporary shelter, not unlike the kind of temporary protection needed for women and girls who have experienced physical or sexual abuse. The modern day Musasa Project is a women's NGO that has been in existence for over twenty years and works to confront all forms of gender-based violence in Zimbabwe. The SLF supports Musasa’s efforts in four high-density areas in Harare and Bulawayo, the country’s two largest cities.

In their outreach, Musasa employs a cascade approach where trained trainers fan out to the local communities to provide information and equip community members with knowledge and skills on legal issues pertaining to marriage, gender rights and the inter-linkages between gender-based violence, culture, human rights, and HIV/AIDS. Although Zimbabwe suffers from high rates of both domestic and politically-induced violence, the country does have marriage laws and a Domestic Violence Act that are meant to protect its citizens from abuse and allow victims to reclaim their rights. These laws form the core of Musasa’s training, which also includes basic counselling concepts, local-level advocacy, and referral. Additionally Mususa targets youth groups for training on gender rights and protection, including sexual and reproductive health rights, domestic violence, and HIV/AIDS. As individual needs emerge, Mususa’s staff provides one-on-one counselling and support, including limited shelter and legal services. Finally, with the SLF’s assistance, Musasa is forming survivor groups in the communities where they work in order to provide ongoing support and advocacy.

Silveira House Development Education Centre

Founded by the Jesuits in 1964, Silveira House is a non-denominational social development centre whose mission is to serve vulnerable members of the community. Silveira offers development education, technical and leadership skills on HIV/AIDS, poverty alleviation through micro enterprise and participatory planning and leadership training courses in communities. In 2004, Silveira House mainstreamed HIV/AIDS in its micro enterprise, peacebuilding and leadership programmes. To respond to needs of orphans and vulnerable children, caregivers and women affected by HIV andAIDS, Silveira House has implemented a pilot project to improve livelihoods and provide home-based care. A dress making school, training in metal and leather works and community gardening has benefitted children orphaned by AIDS, people living with disabilities and those who are affected and infected with HIV and AIDS.  

New activities supported by SLF to expand programme to reach more beneficiaries include vocational skills training for orphans, youth that have left school and other vulnerable people. The programme will benefit school drop outs affected by the education crisis and school strikes in Zimbabwe and vulnerable peoples affected by Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis, bolstering the informal sector where many people generate some income to sustain their livelihoods. Eighty unemployed youth (40 female, 40 male) will receive basic and upgraded vocational stills training and receive post-training support, business advice, tools and some financial start-up support in the form of community savings and credit schemes run by beneficiaries. All graduates also receive leadership, peace-building, advocacy, HIV/AIDS awareness and occupational health and safety training. SLF also supports the salary for the Programme Coordinator and Programme Advisor. 

• Project descriptions last updated April 2011