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Families for Children Zambia    Newsletter May 2011

 

 

Once again, we send you our greetings and best wishes a fine summer and hope you enjoy reading our latest news.

 

Developments in Zambia

Liz Baldwin, Helen Boyd and I have recently returned from a 2 week visit to Zambia and were very encouraged by what we found at both Umwana Kasembe and the Ulupwa Project in Kantolomba. We also spent time with the Lupwa Lwabumi Trust and with its Executive Director, Louis Mwewa, who was most helpful and optimistic for the future.

 

Umwana Kasembe

 

Our first port of call was to Umwana Kasembe children and family centre, in Chilanga, near Lusaka, to meet with Hellen Mpundu, project manager and the rest of the team there. Many developments have taken place since our last visit, in particular, with the completion of the 2 classrooms, which have been built and rendered to a high standard. Some finishing is still needed inside, but one room is being used as a pre school class and the other has been equipped as a carpentry shop. There was a lot of work going on there and Hellen’s son Musonda was happy to show us some of the tables, chairs and doors he and his group of young trainees have completed, again to a high standard.

This group has also built a pit latrine and small shower and they are continuing to make bricks, both for the project’s use and for sale.

Mercy, the talented and committed pre-school teacher, was very proud of her large class of small children, who performed some songs and dances for us, when we arrived - very sweet!

This new large classroom has freed up one of the small rooms to be used as a workroom for sewing and other crafts and we met a group of women volunteers, using sewing machines to various garments with hand made and dyed cotton.

 Many of these women are also cultivating small vegetable plots at home, while local volunteers, parents and youths help in the project’s garden on a rota basis and a reward is given for the best vegetables each month. Grass compost and chicken manure is used, and Hellen gives advice on nutrition and how to maintain a cheap, balanced diet.  A midday meal is provided for over 100 children and volunteers who come to the centre, and Umwana Kasembe is almost self sufficient in vegetables now – a wonderful achievement.

 

Future plans

The project is working hard on practical activities to generate income and they have recently negotiated a contract for making doors, which they hope will make a good profit and enable them to develop further, to become a skills training centre for carpentry and other crafts. Their other activities besides gardening and carpentry are brick making, and chicken keeping, tie and dye, dressmaking and jewellery making. Our focus now is to assist them in acquiring the training, materials and tools they need to expand their business, so that they can support their most vulnerable children and empower others in the community.

Well done to Hellen and team at Umwana Kasembe for all their hard work and determination and for their vision and plans for the future, which are starting to come to fruition for them. We are so pleased to have been able to help them along the way and hope to continue to do so until they are fully independent.

 

 

Lupwa Lwabumi Trust

 

We are now working closely with the Zambian organization Lupwa Lwabumi Trust, of which Louis Mwewa is the executive director and which has aims very similar to our own, namely, ‘To facilitate and promote opportunities for the empowerment of children at risk and their families, through restorative work and family preservation.’ LLT is based in Lusaka, but works with communities throughout Zambia, through the medium of family circles, building up the capacity of small groups to change and improve their lives.  We were able to visit one of the communities near Lusaka, which has been supported by LLT for four years and now has several ‘family circles’,  which were previously desperately poor, and are now doing very well, have started businesses, bought land and are cultivating it successfully. We went there on international womens day, which was a massively well attended event in Lusaka and we certainly met some powerful and impressive women on that day!

 

Kantolomba Ulupwa Project.

 

This project, headed by Patrick Mwale and Prudence Mumba, is also making excellent progress and we found the community there more determined to stand on their own feet, to work together and to find opportunities for generating income, so that they can take care of their children and offer them a better future. This has been happening ever since Patrick took over as Project manager, but has increased a great deal since last year, when Louis Mwewa from the Lupwa Lwabumi Trust, (LLT) held a week long strategy planning workshop with the team and community members from Kantolomba. Louis has continued with regular support and monitoring visits and has supported and organized training for Patrick and Prudence, who have been very much inspired by his influence. It was heartening to see the positive and hopeful attitudes which are beginning to emerge within the community, with this approach, which actually demands more initiative from individuals; it is what we have been hoping to see since the start of our involvement at Kantolomba. We truly had the feeling of a ‘New beginning’ and are happy to see how Patrick and Prudence are encouraging their team to develop.

One of the activities which is proving most successful is the ‘farm’ or field for growing maize and other vegetables, which has been rented nearby and cultivated this year. The first crop of maize was ready and Prudence and Monica were very proud to show it to us. Other activities under way are local vegetable growing (using grow bags, to keep the vegetables out of the way of the pigs which roam the township) and chicken rearing. Computers have recently been donated to start an Internet café in Ndola town centre and this was due to open at the time of our visit. The project has been very fortunate to receive a generous donation recently from the Rotary club of Ruthin in N Wales, together with the Ndola branch of Rotary, which has equipped the school and skills training centre with furniture, tools, books and other educational materials. This will be of enormous help and will enable them to really make progress as a skills training centre for the community and for their own students.  Educationally the school is doing exceptionally well and has more than 400 children on the register. There are 64 children in the reception class alone and their teacher, Madrine, manages somehow to keep them all occupied and happy, while still learning and behaving well! In the senior class, Brian was proud to report that 23 youngsters out of 29 in his class had passed their grade 7 exams. This was an outstanding result and well above the national average.

   Patrick with some of the pupils at Ulupwa

 

Of these young people, most are now attending Government secondary schools and an increasing number of guardians have managed to find the funds to cover or at least contribute to the costs involved. Well done to Patrick, Prudence and all the teachers, staff and volunteers who have worked so hard both in the school and in the community to make this happen. It is such a hopeful sign for the future.

 

 

Fundraising

 

We have had to work extra hard this year to raise funds for Zambia, but there have been some outstanding events and some wonderful support and donations both locally and internationally.  Some of the events last year were; a Bling and buy sale and a stall at the local Christmas market, a ‘Horse race night at a pub in Torbay, a Christmas tree festival, a Cabaret night and African meal and, recently, a Lent lunch.  A local retirement home in Bishopsteignton made a beautiful blanket for us last year, which a group of women volunteers from the Ulupwa project used as a model to make a similar one of their own – fantastic!

 

Our next fundraising event will be a ‘Summer concert for Zambia’ with African and other songs from the Devon based ‘Global Harmony’ Choir. This is at Ashburton Town Hall on 21^st May at 8pm.  After that, the next date for your diary is a ‘Big Breakfast’ in Bishopsteignton Community Centre on June 25^th from 8.30am. If you are local, we look forward to seeing you at one of these events. We have lots to do this year to raise funds to help our projects in Zambia on the road towards independence. Please help us if you can and stay involved.  You can contact one of the committee for further information on any of these events or anything else mentioned here that you may be interested in. Just get in touch.

 

With best wishes from Wendy, Alan and FFCZ Trustees

 

www.ffczambia.org.uk    Phone   0844 3572501 or 01626 774324

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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