2021: Year in review
Boys benefit from Zof laptops donated by Systemiq Ltd
PROJECTS FUNDED THIS YEAR:
$3,000 was donated to St Joseph’s Home for Boys 18+, which functions as a transition house for young men aged 16 years or over - too old to be in the original St. Joseph’s Orphanage but too young to take on the real world. St Joseph provides the young men with accommodation for 12 to 18 months with the goal of providing them with a safe place to live and grow – St Joseph’s provides shelter, food, life skills, training in vocational skills and/or academic training where possible and finally supports these young men in sourcing and retaining jobs through local industry partners.
Drone flying & engineering workshop conducted for the boys at St Joseph's 18+
The funding went towards:
A Sustainable Food Garden: This includes training on organic sustainable gardening through the use of homemade composting, worm farm and growing of seasonal food at the house. The intended impact is to provide a healthy and sustainable food supply for the boys and also to teach commitment, care, diligence and responsibility as the boys are held accountable for the garden’s maintenance.
Supplies for the sustainable food garden
Mark’s* Recycling Project: One of our success stories is Mark. He was left as a baby in a vegetable scrap heap at the Kariba market and grew up at St. Josephs, graduating from the 18+ House in 2016. He was a part of the group who initiated the 18+ house, seven years ago. He is now a Chef in a hospitality company. Seeing all the waste that was produced from hotels, he came up with the idea to start a recycling project using the waste from where he was working. He separates the rubbish and sells it to various recycling companies and donates the income he gets to St. Joseph’s 18+ House. A small amount of the ZOF Grant will pay for Mark to do a Recycling Training Course and purchase basic materials for his project such as fencing, shade cloth, gloves etc to enable better storage and handling of his materials. He would also like to train the young men at the 18+ House to do the same with their waste products. *Pseudonym used for confidentiality purposes
Vocational Skills Training: The young men will be given the opportunity to choose from the following courses
Plumbing & Basic Maintenance Course (whilst at the same time fixing and repairing their house
Drone Handling and Technology
Basic Book Keeping/Budgeting Skills
Psychosocial support: St Joseph’s 18+ House provides personal one on one counselling sessions through a trained counsellor (Auntie Trudy) for each young man on a weekly basis. The sessions cover topics such as anger management, self esteem, job interviews and etiquette, good hygiene, sex education and psycho social support for the young men
$800 went towards a Drone Flying & Engineering workshop for the boys at St Joseph’s Halfway house to introduce them to drone piloting, improving their computer literacy, learning the importance of data, and enhancing their problem-solving skills. This is highly relevant as there is expected to be a shortage of drone pilots across industries in the near term. You can watch the video of the workshop here.
$2,700 is funding the vocational studies of three girls at Emerald Hill Children’s Home in Professional Cooking, Advanced Baking, and Hospitality, respectively. These courses are taught at Harare Polytechnic and Bulawayo Polytechnic, two established universities in Zimbabwe
$300 is funding the launch of the Big Sister Program, a mentoring program for 15-18 year old girls at Emerald Hill Children’s Home to help increase the efficacy of our vocational training initiative through mentorship. This is being led by Media who joined ZOF as a volunteer in Zimbabwe over the summer.
Media Tazarurwa, Big Sister Program volunteer
2. ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAM KICK-OFF:
Entrepreneurship is a critical skill for most of our graduates since jobs are so scarce in Zimbabwe: only 10% of the workforce is formally employed.
To address this need, Timon joined the ZOF team as a volunteer to develop the entrepreneurship program. He spent 2 months in Harare, where he worked directly with young aspiring entrepreneurs and fostered important partnerships with key players for ZOF to work with in promoting entrepreneurship for disadvantaged youths. These new partners include:
Start-up consulting firm StartInnovateGrow (SIG) whose mission is to support entrepreneurs in improving the livelihoods of the youth, women and all vulnerable members of society
Flying Labs Zimbabwe/Precision Aerial, a drone piloting company and educator for social good. We will be working with these partners in the coming months to build up the programme
Timon Rueckel (ZOF volunteer heading the Entrepreneurship Program) and Diana Banda (Communications Lead at Zimbabwe Flying Labs / Precision Aerial)
In the interim, we are seeking volunteers who are interested in mentoring (virtually) youths aspiring to be entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. If you are interested, please email trueckel@zofafrica.org
3. UK ENTITY: we are currently applying for charitable status in the UK. Until we are approved, we continue to offer tax exemption in the US where we have 501(c)3 status.
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This month, a special thanks goes out to:
Timon for his amazing program development work for ZOF on the ground – his positive impact on ZOF and our target beneficiaries in Zimbabwe has been a game changer
Media for developing our new Big Sister Program
John and Ann Marshall, and Mary and David Morrison, for their generous contributions to ZOF that funded the above-outlined programmes
Alon and Claudia for their hard work in registering our UK entity
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton for their pro bono legal advice in the US and UK