The Stories : Zimbabwe

Training helps Zimbabwean family beat hunger

Farmer Nicholas Ncube knows all about bad harvests. In 2002, the rains failed and so did his maize plants. He produced just eight buckets of the crop for his family of five. An average family that size needs one tonne a year. His wife and three young children only got through 2002 thanks to food donations from charities.

In 2003, he learnt about the Foundations for Farming programme (FFF) run by Tearfund partner River of Life and since then the shadow of extreme hunger has not darkened his door. FFF has taught Nicholas, who lives in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South, to concentrate his crop production efforts on a smaller part of his land. But the results are startling – crop output is higher.

Surplus

Last year he harvested two tonnes – enough maize to fill his granary and therefore had enough food to last from one harvest to the next. He even had a surplus to sell and make some money.

The rains on which his crops depend remain frustratingly unpredictable, but using FFF techniques and spreading the timing of his crop planting means he can produce enough to get through.

Nicholas said, ‘FFF gives me hope even though I don’t have oxen to plough my fields. I am seeing that my life is changing and it’s better than those who do have oxen. That’s because I usually do have a harvest for my family and they don’t starve and I can pay the school fees and things like that.’

Training the next generation

Thousands of students have completed Foundations for Farming (FFF) (conservation farming) training. Many of these students have been orphaned and receive a stipend to complete the training. Both female and male are enrolled. It is making an enormous difference in the lives of vulnerable people enabling them to stand on their own feet.

A total of eight hectares are under cultivation and each student is assigned just under an acre of land and given training in horticulture. At the end of the first year, the crops they grow are sold and earnings are returned to the college to offset training costs.

At the end of the second year, all the students’ earnings are retained by them, enabling them to return to their home areas not only trained but with capital to start their own agricultural enterprises. To this end they receive training in how to run a business, learning about accounts and book-keeping.

The sense of hope being created at Ebenezer is tangible. It’s summed up by a sign next to one student’s crop which has the word ‘Zenzele’. It means ‘able to do it myself’.

You can help give a hope and a future

In Zimbabwe, Tearfund works through local churches and partners like Zoe. Individual church volunteers mentor individual children and their families, giving them not a ‘hand-out’, but a ‘hand-up’. Your donation will help to fund this work, and provide thousands of vulnerable children and families with the chance of a brighter, self-sufficient future. Give today.

• €45 will provide agricultural training for five church volunteers. With this training they could then help 120 orphans to farm their own food, giving them the skills and opportunity to build an independent future.
• €81 will provide orphaned families with seven chickens – providing them with nutritious eggs and food and helping them on the way to self-sufficiency.
• €119 will provide an entire community of 30 families with seeds from which to plant up to eight different crops, allowing them to diversify their crops so they are less vulnerable if a particular crop fails.
• €598 will pay to hold workshops to envision and train 60 church leaders – helping them to play a leadership role in their community’s struggles to defeat poverty.

To make a gift today, please give online, call Christine at 01 8783200 or post a cheque to Tearfund Ireland, 5-7 Upper O’Connell St, Dublin 1.

• More about: Zimbabwe, Forgotten Children
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