Second chance education for orphans in Mbare

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The year is moving so fast. We are already talking about year end and some are already packing bags for festive season gettaway! In Zimbabwe, Jacaranda trees are blooming signaling a new season. For school children, the decorative color of the Jacaranda trees signals a crucial time in their lives...exam time. 

Exam time brings a lot of mixed feelings; fear, anxiety, excitement and hope. We are happy that after your long standing relationship with our cause of sending back children to school, we now have a couple of children who are ready to sit for public exams this summer.  We have 3 learners sitting for A' level exams and 10 learners sitting for O' level exams. It has been a long journey for them but worthy waiting for!

I kindly ask you to continue spreading a word to your networks about our cause #Second chance education for orphans in Mbare! 

Dear Friends and partners,

I am happy to share one of the learners' story who is happy with your support.

"Keeping the light on in one of the darkest periods in the country’s history is what Chiedza is doing. Like the name suggests for Florence, Chiedza has indeed brightened her path. From a very young age she experienced limited access to the basic essentials of life, education her very means to rise up from a vulnerable past, a past shadowed by poverty. Florence’s parents separated and she was left in the care of her mother who doesn’t go to work and her father relocated to Mozambique where they originally come from. In the care of a mother who does not go to work her dream of getting a decent education that can help to escape the clutches of poverty was shattered.

She dropped out of school in 2015 while doing form 2 in Tafara and spent the whole of 2016 at home doing menial jobs like selling on her mother’s small vegetable stall, would also participate in maricho, helping other people in their fields or doing laundry for others. In the desperation of the moment Chiedza came to the rescue, Florence moved in with her 33 year old sister who stays in Matapi flats in Mbare. Florence enrolled at Chiedza in the second term of 2017 and she proved herself among her peers. She wrote her O’ levels in 2018 and passed with 6 subjects in one sitting an accomplishment she never thought she could achieve. This was another step towards her dreams. Through Chiedza’s intervention she started school on the 11^th of February 2019 Florence at George Stark High School for her A’ levels. She is doing arts subjects, History, Divinity and Sociology. In her own words it is an unimaginable milestone in her life she said,

“Monday the 11^th of February 2019 marked a new day in the life of a future lawyer that will forever be grateful to Chiedza for the opportunity they gave me, at some point in my life I was hopeless and never thought I would go beyond form 2 when my mother failed to raise money for my school fees, but now I am hopeful again and knows that one day I will be a lawyer fighting for the rights of children.”

Law has always been her passion but her background threatened to choke and strangle her ambitions until Chiedza’s intervention came at the right time. Now Florence and others with stories like hers can hope and dream again.

Kindly keep supporting our cause so that more children like Florence can benefit.