In Zambia, more than two million children are
orphans. The Zambia Children's Fund is working to feed, shelter and educate orphaned children through various projects. To
learn more about what we do,
click here:…and how you can help.
click hereWhat We Do
The Zambian Children’s Fund (ZCF) supports and gives direction to the Chishawasha Children’s Home of Zambia (CCHZ) located 12 km outside the capitol city of Lusaka. The goal is to create an entire village to provide homes and the education and skills needed to enable orphaned children to one day become healthy, self-sustaining adults. Specific programs are described below. The overall needs are very great and programs are expanded and created as resources to support them become available. (Click on the Program Title for more detail.)
- Chishawasha Orphanage – provides homes with a nurturing family setting for Zambian orphans aged 18 months to 18 years
- Chishawasha Learning Center – educates children living in the orphanage as well as orphaned children in the surrounding communities
- Home-Based Support Program – assists orphaned children living outside of Chishawasha with the costs of school and general support services
- Sustainable Food and Nutrition Program – provides children with “hands on,” experiential and academic education for sustainable food and nutrition production
- Apprentice Program – teaches skills to orphaned young adults who never had the opportunity to attend school
- Chishawsha Farm – 100 acres is being purchased and will eventually serve as a site for a secondary school including gardening, farming and natural resource management emphases
- Chishawasha Clinic – is being actively planned and will begin small scale operation in early 2007
The overall goal is to provide Zambian orphans with a healthy, nurturing environment to enable them to become productive members of Zambian society. Plans for ZCF resources and programs are in place to address changing developmental and social needs for children of all ages (18 months to 19 years).
Today, Chishawasha has taken in children from all over Zambia and provides them with a safe, clean home along with three meals a day, clothing, medical care, education and training. The children are referred by churches, schools, social service agencies and CCHZ does its own screening as well. Experienced Zambian women are hired as Mothers who live with the children year round. Employees are from a variety of tribal and religious backgrounds, so adults familiar with their different languages and culture raise the children.
Chishawasha owns and is developing a 15-acre site located 12 kilometers north of Lusaka in the Kabangwe District. By early 2006, two 5-bedroom houses were built with three additional 3-bedroom houses scheduled for construction. Each house is fully functioning with running water and electricity. As of May 2006 there were thirty-three children living in the two large houses, along with four (hired) Mothers who live in and one Mother who helps with extra work as needed. (Close)
The goal of the Chishawasha Learning Center is to provide a quality education so that as many students as are able can qualify any university in the world. Currently 24 of our children are attending Chishawasha School and another 50 children come to the school every morning from the surrounding community. These children are fed breakfast and lunch and are given clothing, shoes and medical care as needed.
School Programs
The school has two concurrent school curriculums, a regular curriculum and an accelerated curriculum. The first is a regular, full time school so children can begin young and progress from Kindergarten to First Grade and on the Second Grade and so on up. The second is the accelerated curriculum for older children who have had very little or no schooling, to learn to learn two grade levels or more a year up to the Seventh Grade.
In 2006 there are four classes totaling 65-70 children. There is a regular Kindergarten for children ages 5-9, and a First Grade for ages 6-11. There is also a Beginning Accelerated Class for students ages 11 and above who have never had the opportunity to attend school before and an Advanced Accelerated Class for children ages 11 and above, who have had up to two or three years of previous schooling. Some of the children in these classes live at the Chishawasha Orphanage and others come from the surrounding area (See Home Based program.)
In November 2005, eight students from the Chishawasha Accelerated class sat for their 7th grade exam along with hundreds of other public school children. Seven of the students passed the exam, including children who had only 3 or 4 years of schooling in our small school. The top three students out of hundreds of children were from the Chishawasha Learning Center. Because all seven students did so well on the exam they were admitted into the 8th grade at the Secondary School at SOS Children’s Village; this School is considered one of the best Secondary Schools in Lusaka.
School Facilities: The Chishawasha Learning Center will soon be moving into its first permanent building. The Center began in 2001 in a small rental building in Lusaka and when the orphanage moved to its present site, the school was held in two temporary grass classrooms and for much of 2006 it was moved into part of a larger storage building. The first wing of the permanent school building is being constructed and should be completed by September, 2006. It will include six classrooms, bathrooms and showers for both the boys and the girls. Because this is the first building for the school, one of the classrooms will be supplied with water and extra electrical outlets so it can be used as the school kitchen and dining room until another facility can be built. Initially, another classroom will be used as a combination library/nurse office/administrative office.
Longer range plans include expanded primary school classrooms. In addition, a Secondary School which includes sustainable agriculture, nutrition and resource management studies is in the planning stages. (Close)
This program provides home support to orphans not living at Chishawasha to allow them to attend school. In 2001, CCHZ interviewed hundreds of families from a dozen public schools throughout the city of Lusaka. We interviewed these families in order to start our Home Based Support Program. As a result of these interviews, we realized the children requesting help to enable them to stay in school were usually ages 10,12 or older. Most of these children had younger siblings who had never attended school at all because one or both of their parents died before they were old enough to register for school.
As of May 2006, this program supports between ten and twenty students, aged 8-19 years old who are living with grandparents or siblings and are attending school. Chishawasha provides these students with schooling costs, shoes and uniforms. (Close)
The goal of this program is to provide skills for earning a livelihood to orphaned young people who never had the opportunity to attend school. Four young men who served as apprentices with the professional builders who were constructing buildings at Chishawasha have since been hired as full-time construction workers.
It is anticipated that in addition to construction, future apprenticeships will be developed in sustainable agriculture, farming, natural resource management, health care, education and home/family care.
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The goal of this program is to give children in Chishawasha programs the experience and academic knowledge to produce nutritional food on a sustained basis. Currently, children help plant and harvest vegetable gardens and orchards. Their primary school studies include beginning soil and water management and conservation topics as well as nutrition.
Currently, this program is in its beginning stages. It is a priority for further development both at the primary school site and in the future at the Chishawasha farm. (Close)
CCHZ is in the process of buying a 100-acre farm located about 10 kilometers from the Chishawasha orphanage. Planning is underway to develop a secondary school and skill training center at this site. In addition to a general secondary curriculum, the school will offer farming and natural resource studies in special project areas.
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Planning is underway for a small clinic under the auspices of the SOS Clinic in a house next to the school at Chishawasha. It will begin operations in early 2007 when two retired doctors from Tuscon will come to live and work at CCHZ for six months. (Close)
