Zambia

March 2007 to August 2008

37&More Project

We trained 40 vulnerable youth, ages 15 to 21 years, in building construction skills, life skills, and basic business entrepreneurship.  We then provided them with a small amount of capital to start their own self-employed business.

As a result each young man or woman was now more capable of supporting the eight to ten family members who depended on him or her for their shelter or sustenance.

We built eight 7x5 meter brick houses for eight grandmothers whose average was 68 and who were raising anywhere from eight to twelve of their orphaned grand children.  Five of these houses were built on 37&More’s compound set up specifically for this called “Friendship Village.”

We built a youth center in a part of Makululu which previously had no services for this age group. In addition to athletic programs it will eventually involve itself in the education and formation of young people in positive, moral and ethical living.  It will also serve as a place where young men and women can safely associate with one another without the threat of exploitation or drugs.

We built an emergency sleeping shelter for a homeless Street Boy Center that is used by 20 small boys in Kabwe town who otherwise would have to pass the night sleeping on sidewalks or in alleys.

We built two different workshops/storage buildings to keep the building materials and tools that we used to construct the houses for orphans and their guardians.  One of the workshops is also being used to conduct literacy classes for illiterate orphans and vulnerable youth.

We attracted the interest and attention of a Canadian foundation known as the Universal Youth Fund.  After having visited our work site and seeing what Family Hope Charity was accomplishing through 37&More, this Canadian group decided to  commit $200,000 towards a construction of a secondary school strictly for poor slum kids.  37&More will do the construction of this school which will give the program an opportunity to train even more vulnerable HIV/Aids affected youth and teach them a greater variety of skills adding plastering, electric and plumbing to masonry and roofing.

We began to establish a reputation for ourselves in Kabwe and surrounding villages as a reputable project  that also did quality work and so...

-- We were approached by one businessman who requested that we build for him a single story, 10 unit apartment block.

-- A local builder who asked us to make 6000 hydra-form bricks for him.  These are stabilized and compacted soil blocks that do not use mortar.  They are very inexpensive that make a strong and nice looking building.

-- A farmer north of Kabwe town wants 37&More to build 20 small staff houses or the families that work on his farm.

 -- We were contracted by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart who run a boarding school for orphans to build three staff houses and a classroom building.

We were committed to the total development of our young clients. So we organized athletic events for them.

Nairobi

ZUMA and Family Hope Charity

Collaborators Working in Nairobi, Kenya

ZUMA (In Kiswahili means: ZUMA is an acronym which loosely translates “opportunities for those who have been forgotten”) was founded by two teachers, Peter Mbuchi and Mary Kasiva, as a pro-active response some of the many problems facing  poor people that they had known and come to care for in these two Nairobi slums. They focused on the children and their family’s chronic need for the opportunity and ability to access to quality formal and informal education.

Over these years Mary and Peter have developed a number of programs to confront the ever worsening living conditions of the poor living in Kamande and Kiambiu.  They are:

-- A long distance adoption program where overseas well-wishers can sponsor a child attending ZUMA/PEMA school or one of the local primary schools.  As a sponsor one’s contribution goes to taking care of all the expenses and fees needed to get a child into a good school and keep him there; books, pencils, uniforms, food, and all sorts of fees that are part of Kenya’s not so ‘free’ public education.  This program has been in operation since 1997.

-- In 2005 they established PEMA school, currently operating as a day-long nursery school with students enrolled up to grade three.  45 children from both Kamande and Kiambiu attend school at PEMA from families profoundly affected or infected by HIV/Aids. In addition to instruction, the school provides two meals a day for these children who normally would eat only once, if at all. The school also provides a place to study and play which simply does not exist in these over crowed slums that have no utilities and are filled with garbage.

-- This past year ZUMA began a Youth Club as a way of trying to affect the lives of youth from the ages of 15 to 21, who for whatever reason dropped out of school or never went.  Dropping out of school to many times means falling into a life of substance abuse, crime, idleness and prostitution.  It certainly means entering into adulthood totally unprepared unqualified for the reality of life in modern Kenya and its economy.

-- The poverty that haunts these children’s and their family’s every moment of existence is of course the seed bed of all kinds of illnesses, tension, misery and anti-social behavior.  Since education and decent employment have proven to ways to help people break out of the circle of poverty and begin get a sense of their own worth as children of God, Peter and Mary are constantly looking or new ways to educate people and teach them employable skills.  This is why the partnership between Family Hope Charity and ZUMA was entered in to.

Children from Kamande and Kiambiu lining

Upon Tom’s return to Kenya on October 26, 2008, Family Hope Charity will, in concert with ZUMA/PEMA, begin to organize the ZUMA Youth Club using it as a focus for:

-- Two new athletic teams, one soccer team for the boys and a volleyball team for the girls.

-- Begin to implement a variation of a substance abuse program family intervention program pioneered by Dr. Daniel Budenz.

-- Start a small group income generating activity initially with 20 of the most vulnerable youth, ages 15-21, from HIV/Aids affected families in Kamande and Kiambiu.

-- Begin to establish or further expand contacts with non-governmental charitable organizations already operating in Nairobi as a way of connecting our clients with needed resources and assistance.

-- Begin initial planning for the establishment 37&More in Kamande and Kiambiu;  that is a construction, life and entrepreneurial skills training program focusing on current unemployed and uneducated youth from both of these slums.

-- Begin to network with local businesses and agencies to set up a stream of local funding for Family Hope Charity and ZUMA projects.

Family Hope Charity/ZUMA

Future Plans:

ZUMA and Family Hope Charity are going to establish a social center in Kamande that will provide a variety of services to the slum families.  Currently there is not a single aid agency at work in either slum.  ZUMA Center will have a medical clinic, a study area and small library, meeting rooms for courses and seminars assisting the poor in identifying and acquiring the various life skills needed to improve their overall quality of life, office space, and sanitation facilities.  Eventually the center will include a workshop housing tools and materials that will be used by 37& More for its construction training program.  At first we will rent a local building, but eventually we will build our own building using vulnerable youth from our own training program to do the actual contruction.

ZUMA and Family Hope Charity are committed to expanding PEMA School into a complete primary school with pre-school to grade eight program.  The targeted school enrollment will eventually be 300 students with 70% of them fee paying scholars and 30% slum children on scholarship.  A key part f this school’s modus operandi will be a curriculum that will thoroughly prepare slum children for entrance into the better secondary schools in Nairobi.  To do that both agencies have already enlisted the advice and counsel of government and university educators in developing a curriculum that promotes sustainable development.  And again the school will be built by HIV/Aids affected and infected, vulnerable youth from our programs.

Eventually, based on Tom’s experience in Kabwe, Zambia, Family Hope Charity and ZUMA will transform 37&More into a not-for-profit construction company that trains vulnerable youth from the slums in building construction skills and also generates capital to keep the various Family Hope Charity projects going strong.

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