TIA (This is Africa) and everything takes a lot longer than expected!

A few weeks ago, we were so excited by the fact that our plans for the Mabvuku school and community centre had been approved and we were ready to start building.  We cleared the land, someone came in and found the best water points and, after interviewing various builders from the area, we thought we were ready to start.

Our piece of land before it was cleared.  It is now free of grass and debris and the ground is ready to be broken

The team pouring over the plans to decide where everything was to go.  Thanks to Kerry Van Leenhoff's genius, we now have beautiful, professional plans for what promises to be a fantastic venue for the care that the children of Mabvuku need

But nothing is quite so easy and the quotes that we have been given for the work that is needed have brought us to a standstill!  We are working on getting better quotes that might allow us to move forward at least a little bit rather than leave us bankrupt and thus, we have not yet broken ground as we had hoped.

However, we are not despondent.  There is much to be done in the meanwhile and we keep our eyes on the goal and try to do everything we can to get there one way or another.  We had a fantastic morning on Saturday morning where a group of 30 ladies came to enjoy a pilates session at the Hayhill Weavery.  They enjoyed a spectacular view while they did their exercises and we had delicious tea and cake afterwards.  Everyone had such a great time that we are thinking about organising such an event once a month, with our very kind instructors offering up their time on a Saturday morning for free.

Judy Amira teaching the ladies pilates under the trees of Hayhill 

The view that our supporters got to enjoy while they did their exercises

We were honoured to be able to speak at the Nomads Golf Club cocktail party a few weeks ago the was held prior to their Charity Golf Day.  The club has bought The Foundations Project a four plate gas stove and 2 gas cannisters that will be used for the feeding programme and will allow us to feed the 80 children at our school as well as approximately a further 170 from the community.  Thank you so much to the Nomads Golf Club for your support.

We are now in need of building materials for the project as we start to build the first classroom block and the ablutions and we would be extremely grateful if any readers wish to contribute in cash or kind to this part of the project.  We believe that we need close to $60 000 to build the entire centre in Mabvuku and we currently sit at $23 000.  We are not asking for a hand out of cash but would be most appreciative of anything that you might have to offer! 

Sunday 4 November is Orphan Sunday and we are appealing to the schools of Harare to ask their children to bring $1 to school on Friday 2 November in support of our work.  If you wish to ask your church or work or group of friends to do the same, we would be most grateful for any contributions and all of the money raised will go towards feeding, clothing and caring for the orphans that we have the privilege to spend time with and to get to know. 

We look forward to letting you know our progress as we begin the building process before the rains hit our hot, dry Zimbabwean soil.  

Land to be cleared…trenches to be dug….

But first, money to be raised!

The last few months at The Foundations Project have seen us madly rushing around organising the VERY successful Art for Hope event we held a few weeks ago.  We invited people to donate pieces of art from photography to drawing to pottery to paintings and had the most amazing response.  We were inundated with art and, in true Zimbabwe fashion, I had a full army of helpers setting up the donations around and about the very generous Kuiper’s beautiful property.  Over 150 people came to the event where they bought artwork, enjoyed a g ‘n t with friends and learnt a bit more about what we do.  The event raised $6 500 and this means we are now well on our way to our target of $50 000 to build and run our Mabvuku Family Centre for the year of 2013.

The St Johns Marimba band entertained us throughout the afternoon

Art work was displayed all over the property in various ways, all set up by our amazing volunteers

Will Sykes donated the main auction piece, the most beautiful piece which drew enough money to build an entire classroom

Marvin and his mate joined us a bit later and stayed on to play around the fire at the end of the day - a true Zimbabwean evening had by all

Following on from the Art for Hope event, we have been very kindly embraced by the polo community of Zimbabwe who invited us initially to run the gate for them at the National Polo Open held on Sunday 19 August at Thorne Park.  We attended the cocktail party for the event on the previous Wednesday and had a great day manning the gate and watching some polo while we raised a little more money to add to the coffers!  We will be joining the polo group again on Saturday 8 September when the International Polo Open will be played out at Bushmans Rock in Ruwa.  The Foundations Project will run the gate and will also be showing the movie ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’ in the evening after a great day of polo and ‘alcoholic milkshakes’ for the adults!


Last but not least, we have been informed that 9 people from the UK, Zimbabwe, Bosnia and New Zealand accomplished the near impossible... London to Paris on bicycles in under 24 hours!!  They did this in support of the ZImbabwe Rural Schools Development Programme as well as us at The Foundations Project and have raised close on 5000 POUNDS towards our work - thank you to those who pedalled all that way.  Your efforts are greatly appreciated and we look forward to welcoming you to visit our school one day!  To hear more about their incredible feat, visit http://www.zrsdp.org/ZRSDP_Classic/Welcome.html.

­And finally....on the ground

We had a fantastic community awareness day with the people of Mabvuku a few weeks ago, finding out what THEY want out of this project, what is important to them and how they can contribute to make it a successful project that is sustainable when the Foundations Project moves on to assist another community.

Grannies attended the community day with their small grandchildren in tow, alongside other caregivers and members of the community

There was lots of discussion, much of which I could not understand!  However, I had some very good translators and once we had had a few hours of talk and questions and a couple of arguments, everyone lined up to receive a polony sandwich.  We did not have enough so those who had got a whole sandwich at the start shared theirs with those who were late.  This gave me great hope that we may be able to work well with this community, even if it has been rather tricky up until now!

Our polony sandwiches were shared amongst the community, young and old and everyone made sure that their neighbour had something to eat!

Kerry Van Leenhoff and her team have been working very hard to put together the most brilliant plans for what was once an idea for a little preschool and is now a proper family centre.  They have been so helpful with their ideas and we are now just waiting on council approval of the plans.  However, in the meantime, Godfrey, the community development chairman of Mabvuku, has gathered together CVs of builders and teachers so we can commence construction and we can also get teachers trained in time for the opening of the first classrooms.

Our plot in central Mabvuku which is being cleared as we speak to begin digging the trenches

An ECD classroom at a school in Chitungwiza - our plan is to emulate something just as smart but with a touch of Shona culture round house on each building so that the children learn about their culture as they live in this urban area on the outskirts of our big city

Blankets and mattresses and play equipment neatly piled in a classroom that we have visited.  We are slowly collected these resources for our classrooms

The school in Mabvuku will consist of four classrooms, each holding 20 students and being managed by one trained teacher.  The skills development centre is made up of a big hall with a stage for workshops and productions and a kitchen from where we will run the feeding programme.  We have worked closely with the International Child Resource Institute to design a child-friendly and stimulating environment and think that we have a great product on our hands!

We will be advised on the final materials and amounts that we need to lay the foundations this week and then, once the land has been cleared, we will be set to dig the trenches and start laying the footing, the first step in the construction of a hope for a better future for the children of Mabvuku.

I look forward to keeping you updated and will do so in the next few weeks as we progress.

And on the 8th of September, we would love to invite those of you who live in Zimbabwe to the fun day being held at Bushmans Rock.  There will be an international polo tournament between Zim and England at 2pm and we will be showing 'The Gods Must be Crazy II' at 6:30pm.  There will be a cash bar, retro candy and treats stand and lots of other things going on.  Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children and all proceeds go towards our work at The Foundations Project.  Thank you to Jono at Bushmans Rock for giving us this opportunity!

ECD recognised as a hope for the future......

The recognition that ECD is important and that we need to provide children with good quality preschools to give them a hope for the future has been realised in an article written in The Herald last month.  We hope to be able to be a part of the advocacy for, and move towards, better standards of education for our children.

http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39833:a-case-of-risking-the-future&catid=42:features-news&Itemid=134

And we are ready to GO!!!!!

After a few whirlwind weeks of meetings and site visits, The Foundations Project, along with its new partner, The Child Resource Institute of Zimbabwe (CRIZ), joined the local government officials of the district of Mabvuku in a celebration lunch last Tuesday.  The cause for celebration:  we have finally been presented with a piece of land on which to build our project’s first preschool and community centre!  There is MUCH excitement in the Foundations Project camp as we begin to draw up plans and gather together building materials for this venture.

The Foundations Project, CRIZ and local government celebrating the handover of our land in Mabvuku with local cuisine.  Kerry and Charlotte tried the grey sadza but chose to stay away from the 'offal'!!! 

Mabvuku is a peri-urban community about 20 minutes outside of Harare.  It is home to many of the poorest of the poor living in this country, a place that is made up of plots that have been bought but are empty due to the lack of funds to build any kind of structure or home on them. 

An empty plot is left abandoned - children who should be in school hang around to escape the beating mid day sun

The children hanging around the dirt roads are hungry and, in the winter weather that is upon us, cold.  However, they still manage a smile as they inquisitively sit watching us and wondering what we are doing as we ponder over the site and its possibilities.

An excited young boy does cartwheels in front of the open space that will soon be a place he can come to learn and play 

The smiling faces we encounter each time we go to the site remind us of why we are doing what we do! 

We have the site plans in hand for our plot and are very blessed to have our friend, Kerry Van Leenhoff on hand as our resident architect to help draw up the plans for the buildings.  Our aim is to include the preschool as well as a facility in which training can take place, income generating projects can be carried out, caregivers and community members can participate in workshops and health care may be administered.  There will also be space for agricultural projects include a mushroom project and a poultry project.  As these plans are drawn up, we will begin to gather together the building materials needed to carry out this feat! 

Martha and Godfrey, the head of the Mabvuku Development Committee,  determine the size of the plot

The team pours over the plans and is excited about the prospects for the site

Our plot - the green quadrilateral shape in the middle 

Yesterday, we had a fantastic meeting with the director of ICRI (The International Child Resource Institute), the parent body of our partner, CRIZ.  He has travelled from the States to give training on ECD and to look at the ICRI projects around the world.  He was very excited by our piece of land and subsequent to a visit to the site, we came up with many exciting ideas for how we can make the school and the centre as a whole and innovative building in which community members’ creativity can flow and they can be given a chance to dream big and to work towards the reality of those dreams.

We are looking for any form of building materials/resources for the centre that anyone may have lying around.  With our fantastic design team on board, ANYTHING can be used and integrated into the buildings so if you have stuff cluttering up your lives or if you know of anyone who might be interested in coming on board to help with materials, please do not hesitate to contact me.

See you next time when we will have photos of foundations laid and all SORTS of activities taking place in the community of Mabvuku!


Help us to make a difference

It’s impossible not to make a difference. Every choice we make leads either toward health or toward disease; there’s no other direction. The question is not “How can I, one person, make a difference? The question is “What kind of difference do I want to make?” 
~ Julia Butterfly Hill who spent over two years living in a tree, to save it from being cut down

We’re not asking you to live in a tree or a township or anything NEARLY as OTT!  We are just asking you to help us to make a difference, in whatever way YOU want to do it. 

To give you an example, a friend of the Foundations Project has found a great way to raise money for us.  They have put together a clothes auction in which a group of friends come together for an evening of fun, a few glasses of wine and an auction of all their clothes that they do not wear anymore.  Instead of shopping at Mbare Market, they shop in their friends’ cupboards in support of the children of Mabvuku!!!  


There are many fun ways that you can get involved in making a difference!  It'd be great to hear how you would like to get involved:) 

Movement in 2012

Since the last time we wrote, we have been living in a situation of hurry up and wait!  What with all the incredible donations we have received, we have had to move offices!  We are now based in a lovely office in Kambanji where we have office space and a whole garage to store our goodies ranging from a tv and a kitchen sink to 97 boxes of corn flackes.  It is definitely HIGH time we get ourselves a school that the children can start making use of all of these things that have so generously been bestowed upon us. 

However, our accountability lies just as much with our donors as it does with our beneficiares and thus, we have been very specific about the piece of land on which we build our first school – it needs to belong to us or at least have a long term lease on it so that we can ensure that the school is a sustainable and ongoing entity and that it is not going to be closed down in the next few months or years.

In the meantime, we have been working towards getting everything set up so that once we have found our ‘spot’, we can get going.  We are working with the Children’s Resource Insititute of Zimbabwe (CRIZ) to get teachers trained and they have offered us two professional trainers to come in and work with our teachers so that they are ready to go as soon as the children enter the classroom.  We do not necessarily need a classroom to begin the school and once we have a piece of land with even a tree on it, we will be able to offer the children a place to come every day to be taught, to be fed and, most importantly, to be loved.

We have been working on our funds and have had a couple of events lately.  We had a fantastic ‘Spread the love this Valentine’s Day’ dinner at which we had 40 guests and were incredibly well supported by our donors who gave food, drinks and live entertainment to provide our guests with a fun evening.  

Our live music created a great atmosphere for chatting earlier and  a bit of dancing as the evening got going!

Charlotte and Martha welcoming and thanking the guests for joining us

Our guests enjoyed an evening of delicious food and wine all donated by our amazing sponsors

Various supporters held their own little dinners at which they made others aware of our work and also managed to get some financial donations made to the project.  Thank you to those of you who held your own dinner and to anyone else who might like to do something like this for us, please get in touch and we can give you some ideas for a fun, CHEAP evening in which you can raise some money for us!

Upcoming events include a Saturday afternoon in our beautiful office garden painting and putting back together the donations that we have received that are a little broken and in disrepair.  We are looking to organise a fun run asap so for those of you who would like to ‘run for a reason’, we will keep you updated!  We will be holding a Sunset Cinema out at Bushmans Rock in Ruwa on 16 June and would love to see as many of you there as possible.  It is the most divine evening under the stars watching a movie on a big screen (like the old drive in!)  If we get it all set up in time, we will bring the kids to the farm on the Friday night for a night of a movie and popcorn and possibly a hot chocolate at that time of year!

I look forward to updating you on our movements next month and hope to have some good news that we will be building!!!  

Bank details - as kindly requested by loyal supporters!

A few people have kindly asked for The Foundations Project bank account details and so I thought that I would put them on the blog so that you have easy access to them if you ever find yourself with a few extra bob in hand!

Account name:  The Foundations Project
Account number: 0240071508001
Bank: Stanbic
Branch: Borrowdale
Branch code: 3104
Swift number: SBICZWHX

If you wish to donate into a UK or SA account, please contact me on charlotte@foundationsproject.org and we can set something up.  We are hoping to set up a UK Foundations Project Trust so that those in the UK have a chance to raise funds and put them into an account there that will be managed by our UK board.

Donations in kind are also incredibly welcomed and we have had some FANTASTIC donations in response to our requests:
97 boxes of cereal and 8 cases of Energade from Miracle Missions
Clothing, books and toys from various individuals
An offer of school equipment to be collected tomorrow from a school in Harare

I am being pushed out of my office by this wonderful collection of goodies and so I hope that we will be able to move it all into our new school building asap!

xxx

2012 at The Foundations Project

The end of 2011....

MUCH has happened since the last time we updated this blog and I do apologise for my lack of alacrity in this matter but as a one man band, I inevitably lose track of something!  But I am back on it now and 2012 is going to be a year when you all know what is going on and are kept up to date with the very exciting progress we are making!

The last few months of 2011 brought about the registering of The Foundations Project Trust with thanks to Clare Peech who very kindly assisted us in that process.  Once that was done, it seemed that we had a very real project on our hands and suddenly this was no longer a fun school girl idea but it was ACTUALLY happening!  And many more things brought me to this conclusion as the year came to an end.  We had designed for us a very cool logo by Christine Seaman at Simply Creative:

 Having this logo has meant we now have a presence and we parade it around like no man’s business! 

We had two great fundraising events/awareness campaigns, one after another, to end the year off with a bang and make sure that the project was able to continue into 2012.  Our first was a wonderful art exhibition showing the works of Brennan Seward who worked tirelessly with me to pull the whole thing off (who would have thought fundraising would be such hard work?  And now I realise that it is never going to stop either – but we did have lots of fun planning it and on the night!!)  The evening was held at Amanzi Lodge in Harare and people were invited by invitation only.  We had a raffle of beautiful prizes donated by amazing friends and an auction of the main piece at the exhibition.  We managed to pull off a wonderful evening with no glitches and a good celebration afterwards! 

Charlotte and Brennan, our featured artist and invaluable event organising assistant! 

Tim Wotton running a fantastic auction of the main piece - congratulations to Russel Clarke who bought that painting

Beautiful wine and whiskey were served to the guests on arrival at the event

Our amazing volunteers sold raffle tickets in amongst all the other ways they helped 

The second event we took part in last year was the 20 mile run from the Enterprise Sports Club on the Shamva Road to OGs sports club in town (for those who know Harare!)  32kms of gruelling running, much of it UPHILL but we were wearing our Foundations Project t shirts and were ‘running for a reason’ which made it all worth it!  Our incredibly faithful volunteers were up bright and VERY early that Sunday morning setting up the waterpoint.  They handed out cokes and water to those on their last legs who still had 3km to go until the finish line.  But their motivation and support kept us all going and I wish to thank everyone who helped at both of these initial events for our project.

The Foundations Project was out in full force to give support to those reaching the last few kms of a hard race

Our volunteers ran up and down helping everyone who was feeling parched as they longed for the finish line!

The beginning of 2012....

This year has started off with a bang with us moving into our new offices at 14 Aintree Road where we can now run all our administration from.  It is central and has a fabulous coffee shop so meetings are a delight!  (Cake is also on offer so if anyone wants to come and ‘see me’, you know where to come!)  We have now got the cash to start building the first school but are waiting on the finalisation of land which is proving to be a little more complicated that initially envisioned!

We have met some absolutely AMAZING people throughout this whole experience including a gentleman who owns a great piece of land next door to the JCF centre in Old Snake Park.  He and his family of about 32 members live on this 8.5 acre plot, grow mealies and other crops and live day by day, hand to mouth.  He, however, seemed very on the ball when we spoke to him and so I asked him what he did.  He was a lecturer in motor mechanics at the university in town and then went to work for an NGO.  He knew all the lingo and when I kept reiterating that I was NOT going to hand out cash in any way but was going to provide them with income generating projects and help them that way, he said ‘Ah, so you are not giving us the fish, you are giving us the rod!’ – he CLEARLY went to preschool!  His children and their ten or so cousins living on the property will be some of the first students we have at our school.  They are, like their father/uncle, incredibly intelligent, polite and hardworking from what we have seen in the visits we have made there.  The older of the preschool aged children spend their days looking after the babies while the caregivers work the fields and it is precisely these children and those like them that we want to give the opportunity to go to school, to play like children should, to be given the attention and mental, emotional, physical and spiritual stimulation that every child needs.

This little girl and her cousin below should be at school but instead they are at home looking after the babies while their caregivers work in the fields

This lady draws water from the well while her children look on - the school will provide income generating projects for this lady while her children are learning the basics to give them their foundations to life

These children will be part of the first intake of the first Foundations Project School - I have had many great visits to them and have realised that there is SO much potential in this tiny community

We do not think that we will use their land for the school but would like to set up some income generating projects there as they have a great chicken run already built and a perfect spot for mushroom farming.  I am learning all about agriculture and how it works in the African culture as well as considering the possibility of buying a brick making machine.  These are things no degree could ever have talk me and I am incredibly grateful for my experience on the ground and my time spent with the people and the children whom I have grown to love so much.