ABCF Community Empowerment Projects

Our community empowerment projects have been seeing a significant recovery with the easing of Covid restrictions in the areas and communities we support.

Vuche Vuche (Botswana)

The Vuche Vuche basket weaving initiative is doing well with business improving and trading getting back to normal with tourism activities getting up and running again in Kasane. We recently sent the ladies to a nearby village where they received training from a local basket weaving initiative. The aim was to facilitate cross-pollination as well as to assist the Vuche Vuche ladies to develop their skills and craft. The training was a huge success with the ladies learning how to create new patterns and designs for the baskets as well as additional business skills like managing finances and client services and engagements. We are excited about the growth of this project and are currently working hard to help them market and promote their work to local and internal tourists visiting the area. 

Mambanje Community Garden (Zimbabwe) 

The garden is current supporting 36 families which are occupying 30 of the 50 beds available. 20% of the crops growing in the garden are being sold by the community to earn additional income. The garden has the scope and capacity to support more families as well as to generate more economic activity for the community. 

Our next focus for the garden is to conduct soil assessments at the garden which will assist us in identifying the right crops that best grow in the area. We also want to provide harvesting and gardening training to the community to assist them to make the best use of the garden. This training will assist the community to plant crops that will best grow in the garden and use the correct harvesting technics for their crops. The training will provide the community with new skills and tools to utilize the garden to its fullest capacity which will contribute to the sustainability and longevity of the garden, especially once we progress the garden to focus more on commercial farming.

 We are grateful for your ongoing support and generous donations towards our community empowerment projects. 

We have had a very progressive start to Q1 of 2022 with our projects on the ground starting to gain moment after the slow down that we have all experienced with the Covid 19 pandemic and Detla variant. Below are some highlights from the activity on the ground in our community empowerment projects in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana 

• Our Maunga clinic in Zamibia is currently assisting 15 patients a day and providing special clinic days for
  family planning services, ART services, children under five clinic, and antenatal services. The ongoing maintenance and service improvements made to the clinic are allow us to continue to provide quality health care to the 50 households in the remote village. 

• Skills development remains a core focus for us as a foundation and this year we are committed to continue to support our  skills initiatives in Botswana (our Vuche Vuche basket weaving project) and in Zimbabwe (Thandanani Sewing project and Vukani group). We have seen an increase in demand for the items produces by these projects and we are actively making an effort to sell these in our trading shops and to identify new clients for these products through our agent and trade relationsihips and partners.

• Our community garden in Dete Zimbabwe is flourishing with the produce that has been planted by the local community to feed their families. This garden is currently supporting 45 families. 

We are grateful for the ongoing support towads our projects and our foundation.