Orphan Education Support - Zambian Villages

It is almost ten years since The Butterfly Tree started its orphan support program in Zambia, to date around 1,000 individual orphans have received a sound basic education. Many pupils have since completed high school, others are attending college, while a number have sought employment.

Within a short time of working on this project we realised that it is not only education that the orphans in these remote villages need. Besides going to school they must have safe water to drink, access to better healthcare, improved housing conditions, and sanitation facilities. Consequently we created a holistic approach to the welfare of these vulnerable children by adding bore holes and latrines in schools, building clinics and providing support for malaria and HIV prevention.

Every family has been affected by the HIV pandemic, which has resulted in leaving 1.2 million orphans without one or both parents. Our workshops helped to build confidence and create peer educators who can then go on to teach HIV prevention in schools. This is proving to be the most successful method.

Our holistic approach has enabled us to reach out to several thousand children in the Mukuni, Musokotwane, Sekute and Nyawa Chiefdoms. We have built entire new schools in areas where children had never attended school. Virtually every project we do is for the benefit of the orphans.

In September 2012 when HRH The Princess Royal visited our projects at Mukuni Village, at the end of her tour she said ‘working with orphans is not easy, but you seem to have got it right.'

Now as we approach our second decade our aim is to expand into other Chiefdoms and communities that receive little help. We are delighted to tell you that we have been able to sustain our ability to run the charity both in the UK and Zambia entirely by volunteers, with the addition of Frank Maiolo who helps with this orphan support program in the USA. Most of them have been with us since 2006, and thanks to their dedication and commitment these orphans have a much better chance in life.

Links:

• Orphan Sponsorship