Sandie Hoberg
Special to The Morning Star
Zimbabwe Project Canada (ZPC) is a collaboration of people who donate their time and skills to help those who are less fortunate in Zimbabwe, Africa. It is a locally based registered charitable organization whose mission is to “help impoverished children and families in Zimbabwe by creating opportunities for education, health, child care and sustainable community projects.”
The 2013 Zimbabwe Project Canada Team recently returned from a busy three- week trip to Zimbabwe where they travelled over countless bumpy miles visiting villages, schools, health clinics, and orphanages as well as ZPC-sponsored projects in rural communities. The team also participated in a weekend leadership training workshop where community leaders were brought in to learn some of the proposal writing, financial management and communication skills necessary in order for communities to manage their own local projects. The team also held a multi-day women’s conference in one of the many villages they visited. The conference covered a number of subjects related to health and well being, including information about HIV/AIDS, the many uses of aloe vera (which grows abundantly and wild in the country) and exercises on self-empowerment and stretching. Also one of the team members taught the ladies a jazz dance, Canadian style, which they thoroughly enjoyed. They, in turn, taught the team a traditional Zimbabwean dance which was great fun and caused no end of laughter for the village ladies.
Zimbabwe is a country with some one million children who have been orphaned by HIV/Aids. These orphaned children often live with grandmothers or other extended family in the community, but these families usually struggle to feed everyone, and the orphans are often unable to attend school as they have no means to pay the required school fees. A primary focus of the ZPC is to facilitate these orphaned children to be fed and educated and we do this by funding community-driven initiatives that will provide a source of self-sustaining income which will support the community and therefore the children and families, over the long term. Some of the projects sponsored by ZPC include pig and poultry raising, carpentry and sewing workshops. All the projects are developed by the community leaders with community input and must have the approval of the community chief to be accepted for funding. Each year a ZPC team travels to Zimbabwe to visit the projects, assess the success of the project and help the community trouble shoot if required. As a result of these frequent visits to Zimbabwe by the team, many special and lasting relationships have been built between Canadians and Zimbabweans.
ZPC is a wholly volunteer organization with no administrative or overhead costs. All monies raised go directly to projects in Zimbabwe and are raised year- round through various means such as the Zimbabwe walk, silent auctions, the Zimbabwe dinner and auction as well as through many and various generous donations from both individuals and businesses/organizations in our community.
For more information about the project and the work we do, or if you would like to make a tax-deductible donation please see www.zimbabweproject.com
