Through a summer appeal for Zimbabwe, UK Christian development agency Tearfund has managed to raise over half a million pounds to support its relief and longer-term recovery programmes in the country.
 
"We are incredibly grateful for this committed support," said Ann Foley, Tearfund International Regions Director. "In these tough economic times it comes with a greater significance when we see people’s response to continuing need in Zimbabwe, and especially so when the story there isn’t in the news as often.
 
"This summer we have seen an unprecedented number of major disasters, all of which present urgent needs and the opportunity to respond. So we want to say a big thank you to individuals and churches that continue to give so generously."
 
Although there have been the beginnings of an economic recovery, many people in Zimbabwe remain very poor with little food and few basic services. The power-sharing Government of Unity formed last year returned a level of stability to Zimbabwe but widespread malnutrition has remained due to the shortage of food and the chronic deficiency of public services.
 
Tearfund, through local church partner agencies, has been helping thousands of people through these extraordinarily difficult times that saw the country’s economic collapse with inflation and unemployment soaring. Now the emphasis is moving from relief to recovery, although significant problems remain around basic utilities.
 
Following a recent drought, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city faces critical water shortages. The main supply dams have fallen to critical levels already. Within a month after the end of the rainy season the volume of water is about half the normal average level, signalling a severe water shortage in the coming months.

The dilapidated infrastructure after years of neglect causes sporadic leakages and, with uneconomic usage, leaves the city with very little water to use. If this is not addressed and people rely on unsafe water sources, a re-emergence of waterborne diseases can be expected. This is why Tearfund is supporting a water conservation awareness project which will help to reduce the risks around water usage.
 
For the longer-term healing of Zimbabwe society Tearfund is working with communities in Lupane Gomoza, a district of the Matabeleland. This project is focused on restoring social networks through healing the wounds of ethnic and political conflict. A series of workshops based on biblical principles of forgiveness and reconciliation seeks to promote sustainable peace in a region that previously was brutally marginalised. The project will also distribute cattle to rebuild livelihoods for people, as a re-bonding gesture that will encourage working together, as communities restore social safety nets eroded by violence.
 
Tearfund, with Churches in Bulawayo, is helping to regenerate Bulawayo prison farm to provide vital food for inmates. The farm currently produces maize and will soon produce year-round vegetables, and so become a sustainable source of food for prisoners that previously would all but starve in their inhumane conditions.
 
Appeal funding will also help agricultural recovery, supporting sustainability through subsistence farming initiatives, with local churches and connected agencies at the heart of this initiative across Zimbabwe. Tearfund is in partnership with Foundations for Farming, a programme training around a hundred local farmers at a time within church communities who in turn will go on to train others.

The scheme works like a co-operative enterprise with part of the produce put back into supporting the local community, and the training passed on by training others. It has the effect of rolling out agricultural training to thousands of farmers, and subsistence farming that can potentially support tens of thousands of families.
 
Tearfund’s long-term commitment to ZOE (Zimbabwe Orphans through Extended hands) will ensure continuing care for some 60,000 orphaned and vulnerable children in Bulawayo and other towns and rural villages in Zimbabwe.
 
Other programmes funded by the appeal include HIV work and advocacy through churches and civil society organisations.
 
Donations are still being received at www.tearfund.org/zimbabwe or call 0845 355 8355

By Special correspondent