Where do you send your kids to school? Where is a school your child could attend? Those are tricky questions when you live in an illegally built village that doesn’t technically exist. Its people belong to a tribe that is on the outskirts of society, and their village is merely tolerated.
The building
All this means the government isn’t going to help in building a school, so the community decided to do it themselves. Next to the simple living huts arose bigger huts that could serve as classrooms. The kids sit on the ground or on low benches, and improvise in finding something to write on. Some classrooms have something like a blackboard, others make do with a wall painted black. As there’s no money for wages, the teachers are mainly volunteers. As soon as they find a real job, they’re gone – and you can’t blame them. Luckily there are supporters in Zimbabwe itself and beyond who want to help. At the moment they are saving for a proper stone building, and work on the kindergarten building is proceeding steadily.
Agriculture
Agriculture in Zimbabwe used to be focused around mass plantations owned by the white population. Nowadays many of the bigger companies have been taken over by the poorer black population, but they are often not capable of continuing this sort of business. No one has the complete picture of how such a company and the style of growing actually works, as the know-how was limited to the white upper class. The workers merely carried out the processes.
Foundations for Farming
So – back to the basics of agriculture and livestock. The Christian community has come up with a method for the new farmer which focuses on working with what is actually possible. This is the way God intended it, which gives the method its name: Farming God’s Way, or Foundations for Farming. All fertilizer is natural, work goes on within the limits of the season and pests are fought off with natural methods and by keeping the natural balance in check.
Support
iTeams NL and its workers in Zimbabwe would love to support these projects. The main need for the school is extra materials, and the farmers need packets of seed to enable them to feed their families and sell, exchange or give away any surplus.
If you want to support Impact Zimbabwe with a donation, this can be done at the bank account:
NL94 RABO 0143 9205 61 in the name of “ITeams” with the notice IA-ZM