So finally we are heading back in Zim, having been waiting for over a year to return.  We are really looking forward to catching up with the projects that we started a year ago, seeing what’s working and what isn’t and moving them along so that the families really start feeling the benefit.  Two families should be ready to come off the child sponsorship programme as their chicken projects are now running well and should enable them to pay school fees and have additional income also.  This is a very encouraging and important step as this is the whole purpose of the projects.

Having applied for charity registration in Zimbabwe earlier this year (which we are just waiting for confirmation), we will be able to work closer with the four schools Wozhele Primary, St Charles Primary, Sanyati Baptist Primary and St Charles Secondary.  Each school has its own needs and we hope to be able to assist them in bringing in their own income, so that they can improve the facilities for their pupils.  Water, power, books, furniture etc are all lacking and this hinders their ability to teach.

It has been a real privilege during the year in the UK to go into Busbridge C of E Junior School, who have linked with St Charles Primary School in Sanyati, on several occasions to take assemblies and a year 3 lesson.  We always receive such a warm welcome and the children are so interested in our work and very supportive.  It was also a pleasure to take two year 3 RE lessons at Godalming Junior School this year, showing what drives a Christian Charity and telling them about God’s love.  We were also able to take a lesson at St Andrews C of E Primary School in Farnham, telling them about our bee project and showing them where Lou’s (Edline’s nephew who goes to the school) grandma lives.

As you know we were given a grant of £10,000 from Kitchen Table Charities Trust for our community project in Sanyati.   This is allocated for setting up a community vegetable garden with shade greenhouse, orchard, bore hole, fowl runs and fencing an area of land to secure the project.  This will be our main focus during our 5 months in Zim, along with setting up our first few bee hives for our BEE Against Poverty project.  Part of this will involve us taking on a full time assistant, a young man from the local community we have already started working with.  He has a young family and like many others has no work, although he is well educated and very able to work.  As our aim is to make this a community focused project it is very important that the community is involved and it will be great having him on board.  He will also then be responsible for keeping things running during the periods we are not there.  Hopefully in time it will be local people running the Sanyati project and we can move on to other areas and projects where God calls us.  So this is a step along the road to that aim.

We look forward to updating you from Zimbabwe over the next 5 months.