Camfed International

Taurai was an infant when he lost his left hand and leg. With no one to help her look after her baby, his mother left him, swaddled in blankets, when she went to fetch water. When she returned she found her son on fire. Unable to treat the most serious burns, the doctors amputated Taurai’s left hand and leg.

Taurai might never have had a chance to enroll in school if it weren’t for Mr. Mutihoto, the Deputy Head of a primary school in the Nyanga province of Zimbabwe where Taurai lives. In the ten years that Mr. Mutihoto has known Taurai, he has built a support network around him – a team of community members who provide him with housing, care-giving, equipment and school expenses.

When Taurai was nine years old, Mr. Mutihoto noticed that the boy was not enrolled in school, although he was of school-going age. Given Taurai’s physical challenges, the idea of getting Taurai to school each day was overwhelming to his mother, who was supporting five children on her own. “I was very sad to see a young boy out of school just sitting at home, so for two years, I campaigned to get him to school,” says Mr. Mutihoto. “What motivated me is love for humankind and sympathy for his situation.”

Mr. Mutihoto eventually arranged for Taurai to stay with another teacher and his wife, close to the primary school, so that getting to school would be manageable for Taurai. With financial support from his grandmother, Taurai began classes and he quickly excelled. “I believe that Taurai did well because of the encouragement he received from other people,” says Mr. Mutihoto. “He was driven to perfect his schoolwork to prove to the world that disability is not inability.”

One challenge remained, however: as Taurai got older, it became difficult to carry him from place to place. Mr. Mutihoto approached Nyanga Hospital and requested that they donate a wheelchair. “They were very responsive,” he says. “In May 2006, the wheelchair was made available, and his peers took turns of their own free will to push the wheelchair for him.”

When Taurai became too heavy to be pushed in a wheelchair, school administrators engaged a volunteer to carve a wooden crutch for him. “When the crutch got too old, I carved another crutch using the design of the old one,” says Mr. Mutihoto. “The second time the crutch was not useable his guardian, Mr. Chisuko, made another crutch following the same design.”

When Taurai finished primary school, Mr. Mutihoto determined that the best option was to send him to a boarding school, where he wouldn’t have to travel to class every day. But boarding school expenses were beyond the reach of the community members who had been helping him. In March 2012, he wrote a letter to Camfed, making the case to support Taurai’s secondary school education. To see Mr. Mutihoto’s handwritten letter, click here.

“When I heard that Camfed had agreed to support Taurai, I was quiet for a long time,” says Mr. Mutihoto. “I was speechless, my joy was overwhelming. When I broke the news to everyone who had been working to help Taurai over the years they, too, cheered.”

Camfed’s assistance has inspired the community in Nyanga to reach out to other vulnerable children as well. “The support given to Taurai gives us comfort to help every child who needs us without fear of failing to take them further,” says Mr. Mutihoto. “We are all so happy for Taurai and know very good things will come out of this chance.”

Mr. Mutihoto is the Deputy Head of a primary school in the Nyanga province of Zimbabwe. He wrote the following letter to Camfed, requesting assistance to support the boarding school education of Taurai, age 17. Taurai is an orphan who lost his left arm and leg as an infant. With the support of Mr. Mutihoto and other community members, Taurai has excelled in primary school – but the costs of continuing on to boarding school threatened to cut his education short.

In March 2012, in response to Mr. Mutihoto’s letter, Camfed began supporting Taurai to attend boarding school. “I’m happy being in school as no child here discriminates against me” says Taurai. “They all love me and support me in many ways. I want to be an accountant after school. This support will help it come to pass.”

One of the first things Camfed does when we begin working in a rural community is to sit down with the local traditional leaders to ask them about the challenges that their communities are facing and their goals for their young people.

In that spirit, last year, Angeline Murimirwa, Executive Director of Camfed’s Malawi office, invited 23 traditional authorities and their wives from all of our partner districts in Malawi to convene in Blantyre. The goal: to share thoughts around child protection, with particular attention to early pregnancy and child marriage.

Kimberley Sevcik, Camfed’s Media Relations Manager, talked to Angeline about what transpired.

Kimberley: Why is it important in the context of what Camfed does to meet with royal couples?

Angeline: As an organization, we seek to work with everybody who touches a child’s life. Traditional authorities are particularly important because they are the moral custodians in their communities. They’re the opinion leaders and they establish the community values. They hold the power to get children into school.

Also, if you want community involvement in a program, you must start with the traditional leaders.

What was your objective in calling this meeting?

The key challenge in Malawi around girls’ education is early marriage and pregnancy. We wanted to ask traditional authorities for their support in preventing those things, and in getting children into school.

You invited the traditional authorities’ wives, which was unusual. Why did you include them?

Some of the wives have experienced the issues we gathered to discuss, such as dropping out of school because of pregnancy or early marriage, so we knew they would take an interest. We wanted them to recognize that even though they are not crowned chiefs, they are informal leaders in their community and women respect and model themselves after them.

Inviting the wives was unprecedented. Some of the traditional authorities did not bring their wives on the first day. Then on the second day, once they felt they could trust us they called their wives to join them.

How did you earn their trust?

When we go into a community, we don’t compromise their power or tell them what we think they’re doing wrong. We’re respectful of their authority and of the efforts that they are making. And we ask a lot of questions. We started by asking the leaders what they want for their children. The responses we heard were: “We don’t want children having children. We want our young people to be proud of themselves. We want our own doctors, our own teachers, we want our own children leading us, not people coming from the outside.”

Then we asked them what they think will help children achieve that: “Do you need more information, more resources, more skills?” We also said, “If you want doctors, you have to send your children to school!”

Did you discuss sensitive issues?

Yes, we talked about traditional practices that hurt children and how, as leaders, they have a role to play in stopping them or fueling those practices. It was a two-way conversation – the authorities and their wives shared stories about what goes on in their communities, and when we heard about something that was harmful to children, we would troubleshoot by asking a lot of questions. By the end there was a change in the tone of discussions, and some of the leaders were condemning the practices on their own.

What were the most important outcomes of the meeting?

The traditional authorities all seemed to agree, by the end, that their wives have an important leadership role to play in their community, particularly when it comes to keeping girls in school. The wife of traditional authority Symon said, “Now I can go back and set an example of what every woman can do to keep children in school and happy.”

But I think the most important thing that happened is we opened a door. Traditional authorities in Malawi now trust that we genuinely care about what happens to their children, and that is what’s going to allow us to take these conversations to another level and to start creating change.

I became a guardian for two young girls, Jescar and Prisca, seven years ago. The sisters were in early adolescence when their father and stepmother set off to search for work outside of their district on the coast of Tanzania, leaving the girls to fend for themselves. For six months, the girls waited for their parents’ return, living in their rented house until the landlord forced them to leave. With nowhere to go, their neighbors sent them to the police station, where they encountered my husband, a policeman. Seeing the girls’ desperate state, he gave them some money for food. That day, we agreed to take them in.

When Jescar and Prisca came to our house, they had given up. They did not understand why they were alone, far from their parents. I work as a teacher mentor at a Camfed partner school in the Rufiji district, counseling vulnerable students who come to me to discuss their challenges. The training in mentoring and counseling that I received from Camfed for this position prepared me very well to care for these two frightened girls. I decided to make friends with them so that they could be close to me and trust me.

I also recommended to the primary school that the girls receive support for their educations from Camfed, and given their situation, both were accepted into the program. The girls were supported through both primary and secondary school, and they performed very well. Prisca graduated last year and is now attending teachers college. Jescar is one of the top students in her class, and plans to be a journalist. She wants to expose people around the world to the struggles she has seen in her community.

I am very proud of the girls and what they have overcome, and I feel happy that I was able to help them re-build their lives. Now whenever I see a vulnerable child, I do what I can to help them. These are our children, and we better do something to support them.

by Alexandra Williams

How does a young woman in Zambia manage to save and invest money when the nearest bank is a whole day’s journey away and everywhere she turns, her request for a loan is denied?

She starts her own savings scheme!

Inspired by what they learned in a financial literacy program coordinated by Camfed in partnership with the UK Department for International Development’s Financial Education Fund (FEF), a team of 12 young women in the rural district of Sesheke, Zambia, started the ‘Aluye Musali‘ or ‘Let’s go, women!‘ savings scheme in late 2010. One year after its inception, all of the women in the group had saved enough money to rebuild their houses.

Launched in 2010, the Camfed/FEF Financial Education Program piloted an innovative new model for delivering high quality financial education to vulnerable, under-served young women in Zambia. Over two years, the project directly reached 10,701 women in some of Zambia’s most remote, rural communities – and it indirectly reached 40,000 people, via the women’s sharing of information and skills with their families.

Many of the young women who participated in the training program work in the informal economy running small enterprises, and lack access to financial institutions. Prior to the training, few of them were keeping financial records or written budgets, or making savings plans for their businesses or households. The program introduced participants to the benefits of successful money management, giving them an opportunity to become masters of their own finances.

The young women were taught how to manage their money through lessons on saving, credit, financial entitlements, and control of household resources. They were also introduced to options for financial services, and taught both the advantages and disadvantages of borrowing money.

After completing the training, the 12 women who started the “Let’s go, women!” savings scheme applied for loans from two financial institutions, and were denied. Undeterred, they took wealth-creation into their own hands. They appointed a leadership team and set a membership fee of $2.50. From their pooled membership contributions, the women began purchasing eggs for resale.

The savings scheme had modest beginnings. Group members determined that each woman would contribute a set amount of money each month – $8.00 – which would be used to buy material to replace the poor quality roofs on their homes. Over 18 months, the women raised enough money from their individual small businesses selling fish, sour milk, and other foodstuffs to replace roofs on all 12 of their homes. To date, they have raised $225.

With this achievement behind them, their ambition expanded. Their next goal was to replace their pole-and-mud houses with modern, brick houses. This time, they invested their hard-earned income, as well as labor, collecting the wood needed to fire the bricks. Their hard work has paid off – every single member’s house has been transformed.

The success of the group’s saving scheme has also bolstered the women’s confidence in their business skills. “In any business we do now, we are able to realize a profit,” says the group’s chairwoman, Neo Imwaka. “Our experience has made us capable of facing any institution that can lend us money.”