Report by BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitators Following Visit in March

Key people:Barnabus Mwela, Coordinator & Titus Mambwe, Trustee

Recent Events

Farming

There are two programs running for the CORAC beneficiaries;
1) Government Co-op; 21 on the program who get help from CORAC to pay a reduced rate for four bags of fertilizer and one bag of seed. CORAC then negotiates with the farmers to have some of the inputs and the remainder is paid for by the farmers at the end of harvest.

2) Foundations for Farming (FfF); six beneficiaries who have been trained and given land on the CORAC farm along with inputs that are repaid at harvest. 

The excess inputs from the government program are used in the FfF program and are also the basis of the supply shop where they sell them in smaller bags at the local market.

The rains have been a problem this year, not arriving until the 6th December, and it has not rained since the start of March which means most of the maize planted in the area is struggling to develop good cobs. People are very worried about hunger later in the year because of the bad crop.

Phyllis (on the right) is on the Board but is struggling with the loss of her husband John two years ago. She has planted a good crop of maize on the CORAC farm using the principals of FfF. This is her only means of income. You can see the difference in her maize that Barnabus is standing next too, versus the traditional method that she is standing next too. 

Education

Costs continue to rise for this program. They currently help to fund orphans into school. 

They had hoped to send three students who had completed school to teachers training college but the costs of this have proved to be too high, so only one student is being helped.

There is one boy Amose (see Personal Stories) who has good school results and has been accepted into university to study mathematics and science, but again due to lack of funds he is not able to go. They have requested to the Bright Hope Scholarship fund to see if any help is available.

Personal Stories

Amose Zuze

Amose was born in 1993 in Chililabnamombwe which is near Chingola. He attended Chabanyama Basic School for his early learning then moved to Chikola Secondary School where he achieved the following Grade 12 results in 2013:
English  -  5
Mathematics  -  1
Biology  -  1
Science  -  1
Religious Ed  -  1

He was accepted for Copperbelt University to study mathematics and science in April 2014 but due to lack of funds has not been able to attend. The cost for an academic year is 28,385 ZMK (US$4,000)

Amose's mother died when he was very young and his father died in 2005. Since then he has been looked after by the parents of his friend. He has one older brother who stopped school from Grade 2.

He came to hear about the CORAC support in 2010 when he was in Grade 9. The Deputy Head at the school, Mrs Malanji, was going around the school classrooms sending pupils away who had not paid the school fees. But instead of sending Amose away she introduced him to the members of CORAC who started to help support him. He is very thankful to CORAC for the assistance.

Edina Milimo

Edina was trained in the CORAC skills centre in 2010. The skill she was most interested in was knitting and she now has a business selling from the local market in Chingola. It takes her 40 minutes to walk to the market from her house.

Her husband abandoned her and left her to support their five children. Her eldest child is 18 years old and is sitting Grade 12 this year. She has been able to use the funds from the business to pay for the school fees of most of her children. Currently just one is not in school.

When she was being trained, Barnabus tells us that she was very serious about the training. In fact she biked 1.5 hours each way every day to get to the skills training.

She managed to buy a knitting machine for 2,000 ZMK (US$300) in 2012. She can make up to 10 jerseys in one day, and she focuses on making uniforms for school pupils. She charges 40 to 65 ZMK (US$6 to $10) for a jersey and they are selling “just ok”. This is her only source of income.

Her children help her with the business by either being at the market selling, or they help her to stitch the garments together after the parts are knitted.

She always remembers CORAC and is thankful to God for the training that she has received. 

Ideas for the Future

Skills Training

CORAC want to restart the skills training component of the organization. It stopped in 2010 due to issues with having to pay rent for the building and people not paying their fees to be trained.

Barnabus has a new plot and house where he wants to put up a small structure for a cost of around US$2,000. They would then run courses that are for a shorter period of time, thus reducing the cost to the beneficiaries, which would be paid up front. CORAC still have some tools and gear for teaching the skills, and they would be producing goods for sale from the training. They would focus on carpentry, knitting and tailoring.

The aim is to improve the ability of guardians to increase their household income.

We visited with one of the ladies that was trained in 2010 when the skills centre was operating and she is doing very well with her knitting skill. (See Personal Stories)

Aged Care

In conjunction with the skills centre and the orphans program, CORAC wants to start a program to help some of the lonely aged people in the community. They aim to visit the aged with some of the older orphans and see what they can do to help them in any way, i.e. collect firewood, clean the house, cook them a meal etc.

Some of the elderly have issues with their houses and they want to fix these houses using some of the carpentry skills. 

Current Issues and Challenges

The biggest issue that CORAC currently has is that Barnabus is pretty much doing all the work in the partnership himself, as well as doing all his own work to provide for his family. They are currently looking to see if they can find other people willing to volunteer with CORAC to help out with the work.

The other issue they are facing is that the people involved in the programs for micro-loans and businesses are not seeing the repayments as serious, i.e. they think that as a charity organization the loans are “soft” or gifts.

Comments

CORAC are reviewing the beneficiaries on the farming program and are looking for people who will be more serious. They will probably start to focus on the orphans who have completed school. We encouraged the CORAC team to visit Patience Orphans (ZAM17) to see how they are managing the farming training programs there. They visited in late March and had a very encouraging time with Lemon, Grace and Doris.

They are now looking at running a smaller program for the beneficaries to farm a small 12.5m by 12.5m plot in the first year after they are trained. The benefit of this system is that the plots are all together on the CORAC farm and it is a great teaching tool, as those that are faithful and complete the work show a difference that is seen by those who have not.