Exist to Exist - Birth Registration in Zimbabwe

Hi there,

The Zimbabwe Educational Trust and its partner the Trinity Project Trust have been making steady progress in the last three months thanks to your donations, this is a quick update on the progress we have been making in our projects.

Trinity Project Trust has been involved in educational programmes, door to door legal advice clinics, door to door community follow ups and sensitization meetings. In the last three months Trinity has attended more than 120 people in legal advice clinics and awareness programmes, consulted more than 120 people in door-to-door legal advice clinics and consultations, and more than 100 people in door-to-door follow ups.

• In February field officer Nosizo Dube conducted educational and awareness programmes at Njube High School to students without birth certificates.
• Door to door legal advice clinics were also conducted, where Nosizo attended 45 people. Amongst these, 10 needed help to register their parents and relatives’ death certificates, 30 did not have birth certificates, three encountered problems of property grabbing and two needed advices on birth and death registration. These cases are still in progress, so we will give an update as soon as we hear any news.
• Nosizo and his colleague conducted an awareness raising campaign on birth registration at Ingwegwe primary school in Pumula. This was facilitated by the school deputy headmaster Mr Ndlovu, and 67 residents attended. After the meeting individual consultations were made, where 14 children were identified as not possessing birth certificates.

Trinity has encountered some challenges in its work. Culture still plays an important influence on birth registration, some in-laws are refusing to participate in processing birth certificates simply because of unpaid lobola (custom in which the bridegroom’s family makes a payment of cash or cattle to the bride’s family before marriage). Through the use of sensitization programmes we hope to inform people about the problems surrounding lack of birth certificates to push our work forward.

To improve our work in the field we have identified new ways to improve our efficiency and success rate

• There is need for a landline telephone so as to make follow ups on clients as frequenting their houses can be time consuming. Additionally clients are sometimes absent from their homes when field officers visit them.
• The field officer has conducted meetings to discuss income generating projects that will go a long way in accumulating funds for the organisation. Such projects, of which poultry and a garden to farm vegetables have been suggested, will help generate funds to cover certain expenses in the organisation, and so become less dependent on donors.
• Trinity Project Trust will need to continue with its sensitization programmes, as still encounters difficulties where people lack knowledge around inheritance issues.

We’d like to thank for your continuing to support our cause! 

Links:

• Our new website