Mangwende Orphan Care Trust

Organisations history and main principles:

The Mangwende Orphan Care Trust was established with the intention of addressing the plight of the underprivileged, marginalised communities in Mrewa District, Zimbabwe and the region.
The Trust’s thrust is in assisting orphans and vulnerable children, widows, the physical, visual impaired, mentally challenged as well as those born with albinism.
We believe that children grow best in families and thrive in community, so family is the most essential source of love, belonging, emotional support, cognition, physical sustenance and spiritual guidance in the lives of children. The best way to meet the needs of vulnerable children is to strengthen the capacity of their families and communities to permanently care for their wellbeing and every effort should be made to do so.

Objectives and aims:

Our project was set up with the intention to impart permaculture knowledge and technology to small holder farmers to achieve the UN’s 2030 agenda sustainable development goals and with the aim of eradicating poverty and realising an economic transformation.
Our aim is to provide an enabling environment for the upliftment and transformation of rural communities in Zimbabwe by establishing friendly projects that alleviate the economic and nutritional standing of orphans and vulnerable children.
We are going to create a working farm and a demonstration site for permaculture principles, techniques and strategies. Training in permaculture based farm design, water harvesting, waste management, locally appropriate building design and construction and community action will enable better use of local resources, improve self-reliance and rehabilitation of natural ecosystems.
The project seeks to promote ecological, cultural and economic resilience in our poor rural communities by continuing to develop our small-scale permaculture site to serve as a model and training centre for trainers, local farmers and international permaculture students.
These rural students will be empowered to help their communities meet food, water and shelter needs sustainably.
The farm aims to be a model of sustainable development and self-sufficiency for the whole of Zimbabwe and to build connections with permaculture projects regionally and internationally.
Trained trainers and trained farm staff will facilitate permaculture design courses in diverse communities across Zimbabwe.
The primary objective we are working towards through our project include building bottom up green local economies and increased local food production/ security, water harvesting, recycling, and small scale manufacturing for the rural communities.

Current projects:

We have been running a supplementary feeding programme for the past 3 years and have been farming to feed, pay school fees and hospital bills for more than 30 orphans and vulnerable children.
Demand for this service is getting high because of the economic hardships being experienced in the country. Yields are getting low because of the use of chemicals and fertilisers.
We acquired land which is more than 10 hectares and we are going to turn the land into a farmer field school for training of permaculture trainers, which is going to be slowly developed into an academy.
Participants will be drawn from 16 villages, ministry of Agriculture and other stakeholders.