Ambuya means or signifies grandmother in Zambia. Since AIDS and other illnesses have decimated the parental generation in Sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of raising the children has fallen increasingly upon grandparents. Conceived during the fall of 2006, the Ambuya Project seeks to provide ongoing support to these grandmothers and their grandchildren within the bounds of existing ZCF programs.
Joining hands with Zambian “Ambuyas” (Grandmothers)
Cuddling your grandchildren, reading them a bedtime story, watching them sleep, play, run, skip, or hop, listening to their stories, marveling in their mastery of new skills — these are the universal joys of grandmothers, or “Ambuyas” as they are called in Zambia.
But in Zambia, grandmothers do much more than cuddle and love their grandchildren. In a country where more than one-third of all children are orphaned, the reality for Zambian grandmothers is grim. With many of their own children gone from disease, grandmothers are left struggling to feed and clothe their grandchildren. Only the very fortunate children get to go to school.
These Zambian grandmothers are quiet heroines. They are the nurturing core of their families through more than one generation.
Ambuya Anastasia Makunka
Mrs. Anastasia Makunka is one such heroine. Nine of her own ten children have died from AIDS. She was left with the care of her 22 grandchildren, feeding, clothing and nurturing them in order to keep her family intact. As she realized her own health was deteriorating, she brought six of the children to Chishawasha to ask if they could live there. Her story is that of thousands of other Zambian grandmothers whose own grown children have died of AIDS and other diseases, leaving them to cope with the burden of care for their grandchildren.
Chishawasha Helps
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Chishawasha Children’s Home seeks to help these grandmothers by:
- Providing them with food to feed their families
- Hiring grandmothers to be housemothers, teachers and for other positions at Chishawasha Children’s Home
- Providing financial assistance to grandmothers by paying school fees for their grandchildren to attend school
- Ultimately, providing a home for the children when a grandmother knows that she can no longer care for them herself.
Join hands with the grandmothers of Zambia and become an Honorary “Ambuya” of a child or children enrolled in one of the projects of the Chishawasha Children’s Home.
By donating $100 or more annually to help Zambian grandmothers care for their grandchildren, you too can become an Honorary “Ambuya.” Anyone — men, women or children of any age — may become an Honorary “Ambuya.”
An Honorary Ambuya will receive:
- A card of recognition;
- A pin to help spread the word about the Ambuya Project;
- Two newsletters a year about Zambian Ambuyas, their grandchildren and how they are being helped by the Ambuya Project.