It has been a troubled year for Zimbabwe and its wonderfully resilient people. Operating within such political and economic chaos has been an enormous challenge and last year we were often left wondering whether we would be able to continue our work. However, we have a fantastically committed team in Harare who would never be defeated. The children gave us the reason to continue and with the phenomenal support from Maruva Trust and everyone back in the UK, we have managed not only to keep going with our work but to start 2009 bigger, better and stronger! As you'll read below, Africaid's Zvandiri children have been going across Zimbabwe to being new hope and support to their HIV positive peers. This is just the beginning of a much larger programme of support we are developing. As Zimbabwe enters new times ahead, we are all daring to hope that this year will bring an easier environment for its people and within which to further develop our exciting plans for the programme. 

 Zvandiri Community Support Groups

The Zvandiri support groups have now been running for four years! We started with one group, which soon grew to two and then with the support of the British Embassy and Maruva supporters, we were able to expand to 14 groups in different communities across Harare and Chitungwiza. In October last year, we were thrilled to receive a two year grant from USAID / World Education which has enabled us to respond to the growing demand for Zvandiri groups within Harare’s communities. With 20 support groups now in place, 400 HIV positive children and adolescents are able to access essential psychosocial support, life skills training, counselling and adherence support through these groups. The Zvandiri support groups have been embraced in Ministry of Health, community and private clinics as a critical component of care and support for HIV positive children.

Our Outreach Team (Debbie, Eliza and Rita) conduct weekly follow up support in the communities for children with specific needs. Each month we see depressed, withdrawn, fearful children who have recently learnt of their HIV status, transform in to confident, purposeful young people through the support of their peers in their support group and their support group leader. Our team of fantastically dedicated support group leaders brings a wealth of experience to the groups, each leader being a professional HIV nurse, doctor, counsellor, social worker or teacher.

The support groups provide them with a unique opportunity to be with other children and teenagers who share similar life experiences and challenges. With the skilled facilitation of their group leader, together they learn to live positively and plan for their futures. 

Zvandiri House

Zvandiri House is our support and training centre for HIV positive children. Sadly, we had to reduce training activities last year due to the environment in the country, but we used the time to develop the centre and are extremely grateful to Mary Miller who has been assisting us to develop the programmes. We of course thank John from Cheltenham who continues to entrust his wonderful house in to our hands. Children in the Zvandiri support groups attend Zvandiri House for training, counselling and above all to benefit from the support of their HIV positive peers.  

For four years, our Zimbabwe team consisted of two, then three, full time people, one of who was a volunteer. Needless to say, this was extremely demanding in light of the growing amount of work. However amidst all of the chaos in the country, October 2008 saw a dream come true when the USAID / World Education grant finally enabled us to hire a Project Manager, Debbie and Finance Manager, Carole. I don't know how we ever managed without them, they are superb!

And to top it all off, our new database system which was so generously donated by EMIS has meant that we have been able to capture all programme activities and accurately monitor the children on the programme. It must be said however that we would not have got far with the system alone - Andrew Willis has spent months (including Christmas Eve!) working on customising the system for our purposes and writing a simply brilliant training manual that even Debbie and I can use! He then flew himself out for a second trip to set it all up and train us all how to use the system. A huge thank you to EMIS and Andrew! All of the above really has marked the beginning of a new era for the programme and the road ahead is an exciting one. We sincerely thank the volunteers who have kept us going through the past years, with particular thanks to Dr Margie, our Medical Director.


 

"Our Story" Goes Out Across Zimbabwe

The child authors of the “Our Story” Book have just completed their tour of Zimbabwe’s paediatric HIV treatment sites. This is a pioneering project, in which HIV positive children are getting out there to tell their story, to provide peer support to their HIV positive peers and to train Doctors, Nurses and health workers. It is proving an enormous success and the team are having a ball!!

At Murambinda District Hospital last week, the Our Story team spoke to a large group of HIV positive children and their caregivers who were attending the OI clinic at this rural hospital. Caregivers who had been terrified of telling their children that they are HIV positive said that they were so inspired by the Zvandiri children that they were going to go home and tell their children that same day!

Our Story is just one of various child-led support materials we are working on and planning to distribute as far and wide as possible. As the Zvandiri children told me yesterday, “It starts with us. We can really make difference if we get out there”. 

Zvandiri Child Trainers

Every week, we receive requests from organisations for training on psychosocial support for HIV positive children. We can certainly do this but the true trainers should be the children themselves. THe "Our Story" team have already demonstrated the power of this approach so in line with our overall plan to provide the Zvandiri children with opportunities to provide child-led support, advocacy and training, 2009 will see the emergence of Zvandiri child-led training teams.

We have been really fortunate to have been awarded a grant by the Ministry of Social Welfare, Labour and Public Works’ National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The grant is disbursed by UNICEF and will allow to train these child-led PSS teams. Each team will have a particular area of speciality and provide training for groups across the country. Of course, our ultimate goal is for them to provide regional training in Sub-Saharan Africa and further afield in the UK and the USA! But that will come….!

 
Regai Dzive Shiri

Regai Dzive Shiri is a research team with 10 years experience of researching issues around HIV prevention and risk in young people in Zimbabwe. Led by Dr Francis Cowan, the team asked if we would partner on a research project to develop a model of community support for HIV positive children. Again, this grant is awarded by the Ministry of Social Welfare, Labour and Public Works and is a really exciting opportunity to gain scientifically validated evidence on best practice interventions for HIV positive children. Zvandiri children are being recruited and trained as youth researchers and will themselves collect the data from their own HIV positive peers. Their results will contribute towards the development of a model of care that could be scaled up nationally and even internationally.

And finally.....

I heard recently from a UK supporter that they were surprised to hear we were still continuing our work over here in Zimbabwe. They had been watching the news and assumed it must have all had to come to a close. On the contrary, we have been working extremely hard in the most appalling circumstances and we extend our sincere thanks to Maruva Trust, to everyone's huge generosity at the Sandown Ball in November and to all our supporters for their continued support through these times. I have described some of the components of the programme above yet there are many other projects also going on  - for example, the Zvandiri Newsletter, IT Training, Buddy Project, Multi-media advocacy and training projects, and last but by no means least, our second book! These will all be in the next newsletter! So please do keep the support coming. Zimbabwe needs it now more than ever! Good Luck to John!!