By Dennis Gaboury | Founder, Chair, Board of Trustees
These have been exhausting days at Zimkids as we juggle the growing number of projects in which our girls are involved. Providing them with skills to ensure their futures, as well as the future of Zimkids, seems even more pressing as recent HIV prevalence statistics for Bulawayo grow increasingly grim. The city’s prevalence rate of almost 22 percent is now 50 percent above the national average. Across the country, 1.2 million adults are living with HIV, a constant reminder of how many new orphans we will need to serve.
The new school year begins in January, and December is the month when parents began their search for the required school uniforms for their children. Our new sewing center, then, is buzzing with activity as the girls cut and sew to stockpile for the coming demand. Uniforms are expensive, often hard to find, and available only in town, a $2 trip. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that a lower price and easy availability will give us plenty of orders. Our girls are certainly ready! And we should note that even as they prepare for the uniform season, the girls are also teaching all the children how to sew in the hope that they will at least be able to care for their own meager stocks of clothing.
The ZimGirls Welders are hard at work, and our preschool is filling the youngest children’s days with sports, computer games, the alphabet and multiplication – and their bellies with solid nutrition. Our plan to open the program to paying students – which continuing to offer our programs to orphans free-of-charge – is moving along. Doing so requires us to construct a new building – a wonderful opportunity for our construction trainees – since the specifications for the physical premises of a licensed preschool are quite stringent. We’re scrambling to raise the funds for materials but are confident that our generous donors will help us so that the preschool will become self-supporting.
Our most recent initiative involves more careful monitoring of the health of our young people – and more focused health education as well. Thanks to a donation targeted to health care, two of our Senior girls aare now finishing a nurses’ aide course. They have conducted baseline health screenings of all 200 children and are monitoring them monthly, using a spreadsheet designed by one of our girls who caught the computer “bug.”
As we watch young people who have been with us for 5-6 years running programs, receiving professional certifications, and growing into responsible and creative leaders, we’re confident that we’re on the right track. The girls are not only gaining essential skills, but they are mentoring one another, keeping each other healthy and, as much as possible, out of harm’s way.
Thank you for helping them move forward into bright futures! And please like us on Facebook at /zimkids! Note on our facebok page /Zimkids that we are now a part of AmazonSmile. If you click on the AmazonSmile logo on the left side of our facebook page and whenever you shop at Amazon.smile.com (Same as Amazon) Zimkids will receive a donation from Amazon.
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