Educate and Empower 18,000 Girls in Zimbabwe

To educate is to empower. After only a year of intensive agricultural education in the Vocational Skills Training Program a group of 15-20 girls from poverty-stricken rural Zimbabwe are not only equipped with the tools and knowledge to be successful in a variety of agricultural sectors, but are also enabled to walk into their futures with heads held high knowing that they are capable of achieving thier dreams.

In a country with an ever-volatile economic situation and high unemployment rate, finding a profitable and stable job is incredibly difficult, especially for young women who haven’t finished formal education and are living under the poverty line. Often forced to leave school early because of financial and familial struggles, girls are expected to get married off young or to care for their families by whatever means necessary to scrape by. Thanks to the American Foundation for Children with AIDS, girls are given the life-changing oppurtunity to learn practical and marketable agricultural skills. Over the course of the rigorous one year training program the girls gain working experience and class-room style education in poultry and pig rearing, food processing, commercial farming, cooking, greenhouse farming and so much more.

AFCA has donated 6 greenhouses that are the cornerstone of the training program. These greenhouses, under the careful care of the program instructors and the hard work of the girls, are not only financially self-sustaining and produce high-quality vegetables for the community; these greenhouses are also a way for the girls to develop a niche and highly marketable skill that sets them apart from others in the farming industry. Experience and know-how in greenhouses, garden farming, livestock care and life skills also gives graduates the ability to return to thier rural communities and manage a successful homestead to support thier families and impart their skills onto others. 

Education is a way to break cycles of poverty and hardship and create a new, better cycle; one where uncertain learners become confident educators, one where those who have been empowered in thier abilities subsequently encourage and lift up those who come after them. The clearest evidence of this is seen then in the fields and greenhouses where the Vocational Skills girls spend thier mornings. It is quite amazing to watch girls like Mary, who was once out of breath after a few strokes of the hoe, now dealing out orders and prepping a greenhouse for cabbage planting in record time. Its beautiful to see the pride in Queen’s face as she carts a wheelbarrow of fresh cucumbers to the kitchen for today’s lunch. It is encouraging, and slightly terrifying, to be a fly on the wall as Panashe explains the process of chicken preparation to a group of onlooking 8 year olds, while she washes the bloodied butcher knife. 

The team here at the American Foundation for Children with AIDS thanks you for supporting this project and the work we do for the children in Africa.  As you start to make decisions regarding your year of giving, please keep us in mind so we can continue our good work through 2024 and beyond.  We wish you a new year full of many blessings and as much hope as you have shared with us.  If you would like to learn even more about what we do or how you can meet some of the children you have helped, please contact Tanya Weaver at tweaver@AFCAids.org.