Sustainability

Making changes that last

Although ZOA has sent £2 million in grants to Zambia since 2006, we ultimately want to take ourselves out of the equation. We don’t want to create donor-dependency, which is why we partner with grassroots, community-based organisations who are our valuable partners.

Supporting our partners

We work with our local partners to develop their capacity and, when appropriate, encourage them to develop other income streams to help them move towards financial sustainability.

Our partners – local people living side by side with the orphans and vulnerable children we support – come up with the solutions needed to change children’s futures. We’re simply here to provide them with the tools and support they need to do this.

In the last financial year we’ve run partner training on child safeguarding, financial management, psychosocial counselling and beneficiary feedback mechanism knowledge. This support has improved the services provided to communities as well as improving governance structures and reporting capabilities.

Income generating activities

We work with our partners to look at how they can become financially self-supporting. It could be through the provision of training, micro-finance or establishing income generating activities.

We support schools to set up income generating activities to provide food or other goods to the school. Any surplus goods are sold to give the school an income stream to fund running costs.

Behaviour change

We know that’s it not just as easy as paying school fees to keep children in school. That’s why we take a holistic approach and look at all the push and pull factors that cause children to drop out.

Often the support needed is small and simple. Around the world many girls miss school during menstruation because they can’t afford sanitary products or are embarrassed to attend due to myths around menstruation.

Our local partners have run workshops for girls and boys, volunteers, parents/guardians, teachers, community leaders and peer educators to overturn stigma and bust period superstitions. Following this we have seen a 49% reduction in girls’ absenteeism!

Zambia has one of the worst early marriage rates in the world with 31% of girls married before they turn 18. This is a massive barrier to girls completing their schooling. Our partners campaign hard against early marriage, again leading to a big reduction in the number of girls forced to drop out of school to marry.

Keeping girls in school

£7.50 can provide one girl with five re-usable sanitary pads that will last for two years.

£3000 can train a whole school in menstrual hygiene management.

Financial management training

To equip NEVERS Club with the necessary skills in financial management and administration of the Club to help meet the reporting standards required by ZOA and other donors ZOA supported a five day financial management training session.The participants were assessed pre, mid and post training and results showed that 100% of the participants increased their knowledge in the required areas.

CEHOZ poultry project

“It wasn’t easy to start the project from scratch but it has now been running for seven years. The project provides local people with employment and food and income from the project have helped CEHOZ [ZOA partner] with ongoing operations such as area clearing, food for children with disabilities and other expenses incurred at Chiboyla Memorial School.

Poultry rearing is considered a challenging project. However, with consistence and patience from the CEHOZ team, the project has proved to be a success.”

CEHOZ

Help change a child's future

Your help can support children through primary andsecondary school, provide nutritious school meals so pupilsaren’t learning on an empty stomach and support those that canthrough tertiary vocational training. We provide a holisticapproach so also provide mental health support and other inputswhere needed.