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Rains bring hope for good harvest this year.

We have positive news to report from our friends in Monze this year as the rains have thankfully come.

Whilst this news brings hope for a good harvest in 2025, the harvest is still months away.  Consequences of the historic drought of 2023/4 are ongoing with food shortages and deepening hunger .

The generous support of our donors enabled BFZ to provide the 84 households registered to the Orphan and Vulnerable child community with emergency relief, mitigating hunger.

     

In January this year, BFZ provided emergency aid; mealie meal, salt and oil.  Here are two of the groups receiving the much-needed aid.

We are immensely proud to be able to help the communities in times of extreme crisis, but aid is not our usual mode of operation.  The OCHA (The UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid) report;

With the rise in global temperatures and changing weather patterns, climate change threatens to bring more frequent and severe extreme weather to Southern Africa.

The role of BFZ is to build resilience in the face of these increasingly frequent challenges.  Our projects are always developed with resilience in mind.

One such project encouraging financial sustainability is Community Banking; the training was delivered thanks to the support of donors.

This is the banking group in Kachiloma, the most rural community group supported by BFZ.  They have used savings from the village banking scheme to launch a reed mat making enterprise. The group make mats together and the proceeds go into the village savings pot, which individuals can bid for loans for their needs or to launch their own income raising initiatives.  

The video below is of Nadiya, one of the women in the group, who takes part in the village savings scheme.

She is saying that the village banking has helped her a lot, when there has been no income she has got a loan to buy food or books for the children. She says that before she would have to borrow from friends, but the village banking scheme is different as she can save within the scheme and then is able to take out funds in times of need.  

Community banking  is one of many projects supporting resilience in the Monze district.  This would not happen without the continued generous support of our donors – Thank you!

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Story 7 – The Water Pump 

This is the life changing moment in May last year when fresh water came to our Makangala Preschool in the Miyoba village in the Southern Province of Zambia  – thanks to a new borehole being drilled and a hand pump installed there for the first time. 

The community has since benefited from training relating to the WASH programme (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) covering the essentials of water sanitation and hygiene as well as measures to prevent the spread of COVID19. This has provided really useful guidance around how to keep the borehole and handpump in good working condition, keeping waterborne diseases at bay and preventing the spread of COVID19. 

 

Having the borehole means that almost 30 households now have direct access to a clean and reliable source of water for the first time. Those households add up to a population of 128 people. They, alongside the school community of 80 children, 2 teachers and a rotating team of pre-school community helpers, are able to use the borehole for their own hygiene purposes but also to prepare and cook meals. 

 

This has had such an impact on the lives of the community and they are now developing a vegetable garden for everyone to benefit from.  

 

 

 

 

 

10 Years, 10 Weeks, £10K! 

 

To mark our 10 -year anniversary, members of our trustee board and other supporters have taken on an ambitious challenge to walk/ cycle/ swim or even kayak the length of Zambia and raise £10,000 to help more children like Isaac. After ten exhausting but exhilarating weeks across 1500kms of Zambia’s beautiful (virtual) landscape, the team have reached their final destination of Mgapi on the Mozambican border. Thanks to the generosity of supporters like you, they have raised over £6000 which will go directly to supporting more children like Isaac to reach their potential. It’s not too late to donate and help the team to meet their final target you can donate here. 

 

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