Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitators Following Visit

Key person:  David Power

Recent Events

Staff

There have been some significant changes with the staff at GLO over the last year. Anthony Chitambala has now accepted a role at Life Trust in Kabwe to run youth programmes there so is leaving in April 2023.

David Power has been contracted as Principal for another three years, although he will be based in Kabwe and will travel to GLO for around a week each month.

Robert, who has been the maintenance man for many years, is also building his own house and will be moving on within a year. He is being replaced by his nephew.

Current Staff:
David Power - Principal
Edwin Chama - Agriculture
Cosmos Phiri - Church based training and course curriculum.
Hector Mwkabe - Youth and Community work
Marvin - Maintenance
Chanca Chishete - Accounts 

Courses 

The courses now run are aimed at fitting into the current vision of GLO, which is to “Equip the churches for the future”.

GAP Year
Due to a lack of qualified staff, GLO has now decided to pause the GAP year programme for youth. It seems unlikely that this programme will be restarted.

Advanced Leaders course: Bachelor of Ministry
This is an accredited theological course that comes from Perth, Australia. It is run as a diploma for two years, and degree for four years. It is mainly an off-site course, with students sending in papers that are marked by the GLO staff. They have students from many southern Africa countries.

The material is rewritten for the African context by Felix Muchemba, David Power, Mark Davies and Cosmos Phiri.

The course is mostly funded by the theological college in Perth, and students pay 500Zmk per module. Currently there are 21 students on the course.

Youth Leaders Course: Train the trainer’s certificate
2 Timothy 2:2 “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also”.

For this programme strategic youth leaders are identified from each district. They are invited to join the programme, on the understanding that they will then take what they have learnt and reproduce it in their local groups and settings. Assignments are set to monitor their progress and ensure that they are passing on what they have learned.

These young people are from the vernacular churches and have all finished their secondary schooling. Some have done further studies, but the economic situation in Zambia means the vast majority have no work or stable income. 

This is the third year the programme has been running and there has been great interest and commitment from the young people, such that the church leaders are now also seeing the value. They hope to see some financial sponsorship from the churches, but this is slow in coming.

There are four modules per year, with a GLO certificate at the end. The modules take a full weekend of ten sessions and the subjects are constantly being reviewed. The hope is to include more practical subjects, such as agriculture and preaching. They are taught in a mixture of English and the local language. 

The cost per student is 500ZMK per module (around US$25) but the individual students struggle to even find the k150 (US$8.50) GLO asks from them. GLO seeks to find support for the remaining costs. This includes food, materials, speakers’ costs (if not from GLO), admin costs and some help in transport to the centre.

This course has been well used by ex-GAP year students.

Church Extension Programme
This programme is managed by GLO in terms of resourcing and organizing the volunteer speakers to come and teach. Each person is to contribute 50ZMK per module which happens each month for two years for each course.

The programme has seen significant growth over the last few years, with extensions into Kabwe, Lusaka, Kasama, as well the Copperbelt area.  

Income Generation 

These projects have proven to be difficult, with the chicken run and fishpond basically only breaking even. The major issue is one of transport to the market, meaning when the produce is ready to sell, they aren’t able to deliver. This in turn increases feed costs which quickly eats into the profit margins. 

Agriculture and Farming 

Edwin has started to set up the demonstration plot and this year has focused on soyabeans and trees. He has planted over 130 trees in the plot, with avocados, cashew, macadamia, liches, peaches, lemons, oranges and redwood. 

The redwood trees are there to create biomass as they grow to prune branches and leave them to rot. 

They have also set up some beehives near the plot to demonstrate bee keeping.

They will be harvesting the soyabeans in May/June and will record the yield.

There are three volunteers who have been helping with the programmes. Edwin has been managing the workers but due to still completing his teacher's training certificate has not had as much time at GLO as he would like.

Currently Edwin is helping to train 44 ladies in the local community in farming. He is also in the process of communicating with four churches in the local area to start specific farming training programmes for the church members who are currently farming. The aim is for each church to select 20 participants who will come to GLO for training, be empowered with some farming inputs, and receive follow up visitations from Edwin. Edwin is working on a budget to present to us for these programmes.

Plans for the Future

GLO is continuing towards being a more theologically orientated college, with students coming for short periods of time. BHW's primary focus was the GAP year course and now that this has been discontinued there is no further need for the financial support we were providing for this. 

The community development agricultural programme being developed by Edwin continues to present possibilities going forward. There might also be potential for students of the Training of Trainers course to receive a Bright Hope World scholarship based on an individual application by GLO for each student.

Comments

Edwin is still available to visit the other Bright Hope World partners that were trained in 2022, to encourage them and follow up. We saw a real benefit in this from the visit to Power Christian Ministry and Ukusenaminwa farmers. We are looking at more visits to PCM ministry farmers regarding soyabean production later this year.