Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitator

Key Person: Oliver Mulenga

Recent Events

Activities

There are currently 25 orphans who are on the programme supported by Bright Hope World.

Every Saturday they meet at the centre for extra lessons and spiritual guidance. They also undergo lessons from the book called “Hope for the Future” as well as motivational talks.

The majority of the orphans come from very poor homes where meals are not available on a daily basis and they struggle to have funds for school requirements. This is seen in how hungry they are when they are served food at the centre on the Saturdays when they come.

The orphans get help with school uniforms, shoes, socks, books and Saturday meals.

Currently there is only one teacher who is volunteering on Saturdays. Her name is Prisca Chisenga. She started helping this year. Prisca is getting K50 (US$2.20) every weekend she is there. 

COVID Challenges

COVID brought its own challenges to the ministry to the extent that the health inspectors almost closed the place down due to classrooms being too small. To solve this problem Oliver broke down some walls in the classrooms and made the rooms bigger in order to accommodate the children while still enabling them to socially distance themselves from each other. They also had to put some money towards buying face masks for the children to wear every Saturday as they met.

Another major factor that came with Coronavirus is the increase in prices at the market which affected the buying of food stuffs for the Saturday program. Prices have doubled, for example 2 kgs of sugar has gone from 18ZMK to 42ZMK in the last year alone.

The cook for the Saturday morning program, Ruth who is in Grade 12, has now been told by the health inspectors that she has to get certified to be able to carry out her duties. This involves her getting forms from the council to apply, and going to the hospital to then get an examination done.  They are attending to this now. 

Block Building Business

Oliver's block building business has carried on well even with the disruption of COVID. He employes four workers on a piece meal basis who come and construct the blocks with a machine.

Oliver has been thinking that with the way the world is "who knows how long it will be for us to be here", so building God's kingdom is in the front of his mind. He has therefore been using the profits of his business to help the local churches he planted paint and maintain their buildings. His generosity is quite amazing, putting 25,000ZMK (over US$1,000) into these programmes.

Personal Stories

Noah Kambenja

Noah lives with his grandmother, together with eight other grandchildren. The grandmother is a small-scale businesswoman who tries to care for all the grandchildren she looks after. Noah’s father doesn’t care about his and his sibling’s welfare since his mother’s death. He could have been in a higher grade at school considering his age but unfortunately he cannot be because he stayed for some time with relatives who sadly used him to sell things at the market for them. His grandmother went and got him because she saw how difficult life was for Noah. 

In 2015, while in Kalulushi, Noah was found by Oliver who put him on the school support programme and helped him start Grade 1. He hopes he can be supported until he finishes school and he dreams of becoming a soldier. 

Ideas for the Future

Oliver is looking at sending a budget through for the construction of a storage shed for fertilizer. The government is trying to empower farmers with fertilizer programmes and they are looking for places to store and distribute fertilizer. We will see what the numbers look like once he sends this through.

Comments

The initial 38 orphans that were part of this programme at it's inception have all now finished school and the 25 orphans currently being assisted are new children that have been added. 

Bright Hope World has not committed to fund these children through school but were waiting for the last of the older orphans to finish school before deciding what to do. My thoughts are to not fund the children into schools but to keep the extra lessons and Saturday morning programme going where these children do get to have some input.  I therefore recommend that we reduce the budget for 2022 down slightly to US$2,700.