Case Study: Charity – Wellbeing Champion
“We want them to uplift their lives, these are the ones that will be the future leaders of tomorrow and we really want to support them”
Charity has been with BFZ since our beginnings, as a founding member of Twaabane group, one of the first community groups that we worked with. BFZ run weekly Wellbeing sessions across seven communities, offering one-to-one counselling and group learning given by BFZ trained community caregivers. Charity has become an expert in supporting children’s wellbeing and this year has started a new role as a BFZ Wellbeing Champion, travelling to other community groups to support new counsellors and share good practice.
Charity was one of our first Good Goat herders, enabling her to make a small income. She has since helped us to shape projects to assist in tackling some of the problems she and her group were facing.
Charity helped us to develop our Wellbeing programme. Charity wanted to join forces with other single women looking after orphans and vulnerable children. At the time, she was looking after two orphans, Joshua, 7 and Boyd, 5. Charity’s dream was for her boys to have an education and a better life after school, but the challenges were many. She was alone and struggled to earn money in her rural home. She was traumatised by grief and loss following the deaths through HIV/Aids of so many of those she loved, she worried about how she could parent the boys and support them through their own journeys of grief and loss.
Charity was one of the first caregivers to train in child counselling and has led weekly sessions in her community group ever since, supported by annual refresher training.
Around 12 children and young people attend each session where they also enjoy a nutritious meal and take part in activities and games.
“The challenges facing children in Zambia are many − education, food and clothing, the vulnerable families are lacking these things. Many of these children and young people are orphans and they have been moved from home to home and are suffering grief and loss and problems of belonging. Wellbeing sessions help our children to express whatever they are going through. If a child is not given the time and chance to express, it will affect them in every angle of their lives. Where you talk about education, they will not be performing well at school, where you talk about the social life, they will not be able to interact with other young people, where they are supposed to contribute to the nation they will be failing at this. These sessions, they allow the children and young people to open up, to learn to interact and it is helping them to avoid challenges in the future.” Charity.
