Feed 200 Zimbabwean Orphans Mind, Body & Soul

Zimbabwe’s economy is once again beginning to collapse. Over the past 18 months, more than 4,000 companies have closed and last month alone, 20,000 workers lost their jobs. At this point, 83 percent of government income goes to pay the salaries of government workers, so everything from hospitals and schools to roads and sewer systems is being starved of desparately-needed capital.

Poverty levels – and the levels are set at basic subsistence – are skyrocketing. In the region where we work, about 80 percent of the population is considered “poor,” and even experienced teachers are reduced to $230 a month. Food costs match the USA’s.

At Zimkids, then, we’ve tightened our belts as much as possible to extend our safety net, most recently to a group of children who live in a shantytown called Methodist several miles away. A year ago, a group of our older kids reached out to the children of Methodist on weekends with games, educational programs and other activities. Just as the southern hemisphere winter set in, boxes of shoes and blankets from our incredible Texas grandmothers arrived, so those children didn’t have to spend the cold months shivering. And now, using the harvest from our own gardens, we have extended our feeding program to those children, swelling our ranks to 300 children.  

In our continuing attempt to avoid nagging you and other donors for funds, we’re finally on our way to the one project we believe will help us most in moving toward some level of self-sustainability, opening our pre-school to paying children. Once we had our preschool opened and two of our alumnae licensed as early childhood education (ECD) teachers, we were inundated with requests for places from the families of non-orphans since there is only one other preschool in our area and it lacks almost everything such a facility needs. Our goal is to continue offering free places to orphans but to expand with paying students. In order to do so, we need a new building that is compliant with local regulation – and it took SIXTEEN MONTHS for city council to grant us a permit to begin construction.

With that in hand, our kids are now hard at work digging the foundation. We have sent two more of our older alumnae for ECD training and certification. If all goes well, we’ll actually be receiving income when school begins in January and expect that the entire preschool will be self-sustaining within a year. A major victory!

The other major victory of the past several months is the improvement in the health of Pritchard, one of our 14-year-olds, whom we feared we would lose weeks ago. Unable to keep food down, he was finally hospitalized. Three weeks after his released, he made his first return foray at Zimkids – wearing a HUGE smile. Although still very thin, he is gradually regaining his weight and strength – thanks to the donors who are helping to provide him with a healthy diet and anti-nausea medicine and to our beloved Dr. Sashka Maksimovic who is always there to help our young people stay well.

Tinashe, our director, arrives in the U.S. next month for a fundraising swing around the country. Given our need to build and support an additional 100 children, we’re stretched very tight at the moment. So we’d be extremely grateful if you could link us up with schools or churches that he and Dennis might visit, and if you could consider giving us a recurring donation of even $10 a month. That might not sound like a lot of money, but you’d be shocked how much food it can provide to hungry youth in Zimbabwe.

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