This month, meet FOST, an SLF partner supporting orphans and their care-givers, a new Grandmothers Campaign staffer, and find out what’s going on in grandmother groups across the country. Many thanks to Shelagh Jane Woods for providing this report.
FOST (Farm Orphan Support Trust)
FOST supports vulnerable households in five of ten provinces in Zimbabwe, and has been an SLF partner for years. Their focus is on farm communities, and on households headed by grandmothers. One of their goals is to improve quality of life for vulnerable children and their caregivers. Each of their three speakers expressed great gratitude to the SLF and to the grandmothers who support the SLF, for their long partnership.
Facing shifting challenges since their founding in the 1990s within the AIDS pandemic context, they now see households and communities struggling additionally with the effects of poverty, climate change (droughts, floods, etc.), and mental health issues. The SLF’s goals are a good fit with theirs.
Their main presenter, Mr. Blessing Mutama, showed a video (which the SLF hopes to make available) that featured service providers and recipients. A principal emphasis of FOST is kinship care, which they have found accounts for about 90% of the Zimbabwean children in care. Echoing what we hear from Indigenous people in Canada, children placed with relatives for care keep their cultural heritage and grow up in a family setting, which are important factors. And FOST has found that children overwhelmingly prefer kinship care. One of the presenters also noted that kinship care keeps children out of costly government-funded care.
Current challenges facing caregivers are food scarcity, a lack of solid programming that recognizes and supports caregivers, the aging of many grandparents who are the caregivers, a lack of the next generation to relieve these grandparents of the burdens of caregiving, the dramatic changes in children’s behaviours (e.g., early sexual activity, early marriages, drug use) and of course poverty. Unsurprisingly, there can also be abuse of vulnerable children.
There are strong signals that the government of Zimbabwe has been listening to the grandmothers and organizations like FOST. The government has finally updated its 1990s’ orphan care policy, partly due to grandmothers’ advocacy, and recognizing kin caregivers. FOST has supported grandmothers getting together to share their experiences in a safe place, pooling their often meagre resources to create small loan funds that can be used to buy supplies, including animals, and thus spur economic improvement and advancement. FOST finds that these groups empower grandmothers and other caregivers, and expects them then to help identify other vulnerable people in need of assistance, and provide information about available services. Last month they held two meetings that brought together about 300 grandmothers whose views feed into the advocacy that FOST undertakes to improve support for kinship care.
FOST also sends social workers on home visits to check on clients, offering psychosocial supports. They work with the Ministry of Education to provide volunteer teachers with the knowledge to identify and address the problems that children bring to school.
FOST-supported children’s clubs are part of their self-help group approach. These clubs offer education, sports activities, and discussion spaces.
They also provide funding for the education of children, with 125 currently being supported, of which 25 are at the secondary school level.
For those of us who are always hungry for information about what the SLF funds actually support, this call was a remarkable insight into exactly what one important partner organization has been doing. Visit the FOST website
Meet Thushika
On the remainder of the call, Alanna introduced the new officer on the Campaign, Thushika, whose background was with the Heart and Stroke Foundation and a local Canadian Cancer Society branch. Her experience includes managing volunteers and putting on fundraising events.
X-Canada Exchange
In the roundtable reporting, I noted another very successful cheese sale. Another group talked about their storytelling event where their local storytellers’ guild does not charge them for their service. A Vancouver rep asked for help from any groups that have held jewellery sales. I offered my email and will redirect anything I receive to whomever would be prepared to offer information about such a sale.
A Greater Vancouver GoGos rep (they are a network of 16 groups) talked about how groups are really networking with other groups and collaborating on sales and other activities.
Coming up
There is a webinar on December 2, World AIDS Day, with a panel with three long-term SLF partners who will talk about AIDS, past and present. More details will follow from SLF.
Attention donors
Those with money to send to the SLF should note that their year-end is not until June. At anytime, one can donate via electronic transfer, a courier, or call the Foundation directly. The rest of us will just pray for a quick end to the postal strike.