By Dennis Gaboury | Founder, Chair, Board of Trustees
Long before Zimkids decided to mount its vocational training program, we were already informally engaged in helping a least one young person prepare for his future, Tinashe Basa, our director. Tinashe, who co-founded Zimkids with Dennis Gaboury, was 17 years old, living on the streets yet volunteering at a small orphan project when he and Dennis met. With no family support to pay his fees, he hadn’t been able to finish high school. He had no idea how to develop a budget, keep accounts, operate a computer or run an organization. He had never welded, sewed, layed brick, plumbed, or fixed a phone. Today he can do all that and more.
He learned on the job, and last week we saw once more how much that training paid off when he was awarded a Mandela Washington Fellowship, a program run by the U.S. Department of State for Young African Leaders. He and the other fellows from across the continent will spend 6 weeks at universities in the U.S. (Tinashe is headed to Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina) and then convene en masse at a special summit for a meeting with President Barack Obama.
Pretty great vocational training, don’t you think?
At the moment, our young trainees are hard at work building our new preschool. They’re almost at roof level, and because of their hard work digging the foundation, mixing cement, laying blocks and bricks, plastering and painting. All of our Zimkids will play a role helping to bring the building to completion. Ngqabutho will handle the plumbing and Nkosi will connect the building to our solar electrical grid. We expect that our preschool will move into its new home by the end of April.
This year, Bulawayo has suffered from record heat and very little early rain, so even the plants in our greenhouse were suffering. But our young people installed extra shading cloth and now we are harvesting another bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers, onions, collard greens and kale.
We are continuing with our program of sending selected young people for special training we cannot do in house, and at the moment, Mthokozisi is being trained to work as a nurses’ aide. He is our first boy to take this training. Shaun begins his automotive attachment in May and Peter continues with his welding training.
All the good news about the progress of so many of our young people was dulled by the death of Energy Maburutse, a long-serving member of our board. Energy, who was wheelchair bound from birth by severe osteogenesis imperfect (brittle bone disease) had just graduated from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. But shortly after he arrived home to Zimbabwe, he developed a severe cough and died in a tiny rural hospital near his family home. He will be sorely missed.
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