Help Rural Women Start Income Generating Projects

Dear friends,

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to you for your continued support of this project. Empowering disadvantaged rural women by introducing income generating projects is at the heart of our organization and is our strategy for alleviating hunger and poverty and promoting self-sufficiency. The goal of this project is to provide a way for women to earn an income so that they can feed their families, provide better health care for themselves and their children and to be in a position to send their children to school.

The biggest challenge we are faced with is water. The area where we operate is located along the Sabi valley in the southern part of Zimbabwe. This area is very hot and is characterized by prolonged droughts.  This poses a big problem since mushrooms require a lot of water.

In phase 2 of this project our focus is to raise funds to dig  a borehole.  We firmly believe that this project will benefit this area greatly. Mushrooms provide more than just taste and texture to food, they provide high nutirional value as well. This area has been hardly hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The majority of the women who will benefit from this project are living with HIV/AIDS. They will benefit greatly by including mushrooms in their diet.

Why this project is important

Tendai Purasi is one of the women who will benefit from this project. She currently receives food and clothing from the Tekeshe Foundation through our Food and Clothing program.  She is a widow and she is living with HIV/AIDS.  When I arrived for my annual visit in December of 2005, Tendai was very frail.  Her health had deteriorated noticeably from the time I last saw her during my 2004 visit.  She informed me that her condition had affected the strength of her legs and it was very difficult and painful for her to walk.  In spite of this obstacle it was still necessary for Tendai to spend hard days in the hot sun tending crops.  Through the foundation, we were able to give her some food and cooking oil.  We also gave her some of the vitamins.  Within two weeks after the food had been provided, Tendai’s condition had noticeably improved.  It was obvious that, in spite of her desperate efforts, she was unable to provide for herself the nutrition needed to survive.

Through our partneship with New England Pentecostal ministries, missionaries and friends of the foundation in the United States we have sent 6  40-foot containers of clothing, food, medical supplies and many other much needed items to Zimbabwe. Tendai and numerous other people in the same predicament as she is have benefited tremendously from these shipments. In the attached pictures you can see Tendai and some of the beneficiaries receiving food and clothing from tthe foundation.

Even though we provide food and clothing to poor women, our long term goal is to lift them out of poverty and to build a culture of economic indepence. We are guided by the old the old saying, "When you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. When you give him a fishing rod and teach him how to fish he wil eat for a life time." This holistic approach ensures that people like Tendai have enough food to eat and looks out for their long term economic propspects.

Though we are making progress  we still have a long way to go reach our goal for this project.

We thank you so much for your support as we help Tendai and many other women who are in the same predicament.

Best wishes for 2014

Yours sincerely,

Thelma Sithole