Our reintegration project
Volunteer for Project 2012

Goodbye to Father David Everitt

Fundraising 2010

Our very sincere thanks to all who helped organise, donated their time and skills and provided donations to make all the events such a great success.

In September and October our fundraising took a new direction as Maya Williams jumped out of a plane (with a parachute) and Josh Ellis realised the benefit of several hard months of training by completing the Dublin Marathon. Very many congratulations and thanks to them both.

It is always particularly heartening when children reach out to help other children. We have had several young donors over the years and here are some recent examples. The Sunday School at St Josephs who have set up an Advent Safari. Two years ago they build a nativity crib using recycled materials and collected donations by asking people if they would like to have a figure placed in the crib. This year, the characters will be African animals travelling across the church to get to the crib.

St Mary’s primary school in Glossop have adopted Mother of Peace as their charity and are already busy with their fundraising. In South London Maddy Cavaliero-Knox, Louise Guillame and Ruby Hamilton ran a stall at their local school Christmas fair on the 4th December selling goods donated for Mother of Peace. Many, many thanks to all our young supporters

Annual General Meeting

As part of the business of running the UK Charity, our Annual general Meeting was held on the 22nd May 2010, the existing Trustees John and Sue Middleditch, Rowena Solomon, Linda Edwards, John Chiriga and Collette Robson were re-elected. We were very pleased to welcome onto the Board an additional two Trustees, Cathy Newbury and Kristina Masuwa-Morgan.

Container Shipment

For the second year running Father Elias Chinzara who is a member of the Mother of Peace Trust in Zimbabwe has been visiting the UK at the time our container was being loaded. This year as last, Father Elias organised a Zimbabwean contingent of helping hands to join our local volunteers in loading the container. Practice makes perfect and although the task of organising, packing and loading the container still requires a huge effort, it has become easier as we all are more experienced in the task at hand. This year we have also had the benefit of a room provided by Big Yellow Storage in Beckenham organised by Josh Ellis which has been a fantastic asset. We would like to thank those people who collected donations for the container and then spent hours packing and sorting clothes and other goods into cardboard boxes . As it has become easier to source goods within Zimbabwe , we keep checking that the container is still the best way to use our funds and MOPC Mutoko have confirmed that this remains the case and they want us to ship another container in 2011.

MOPC (Mutoko)

Two of our Trustees and one of our members have been able to visit Mother of Peace this year. During the first part of the year, there were some really promising developments. Stella Cornneck, the Community Leader had personally taken charge of the farm and as a result record harvests were achieved Some of the land going down towards the dam has been reclaimed and drained by sweet potato trenches.

Trees have been removed so that land can be more easily cultivated. In the springtime, the fields were full of maize, greens, pumpkins, sweet potatoes. The children have also been getting more involved in helping on the farm and maintaining their own vegetable gardens.

The unpredictable rains and the periodic breakdown of the irrigation pump are a constant threat to the crops and Mother of Peace have been applying to various organisations to try and get funding for a replacement pump.

The priority of MOPC UK remains to raise funds to support the running costs of the Child Welfare Department and funds permitting we send down £20,000 per year in quarterly instalments. If, after setting aside one years reserve plus upcoming commitments for the next 12 months, we have additional funds available we also consider funding projects proposed by MOPC Mutoko. We maintain a reserve as the nature of our fund raising is that it is always unpredictable. In April this year we were able to send down additional funds to help with the farm and other running costs, plus some kick-start funding for basic computer literacy and garment making courses.

In 2006-7 the UK Charity funded the purchase of lay pullets and the building of chicken runs to house up to 3000 chickens so that eggs can be sold locally. This project was initially very successful and was generating a good income. With all the economic difficulties that ensued in 2008 and the subsequent unavailability of feed and medication, the chickens were not thriving and the project collapsed. The new livestock manager is keen to regenerate the project now that supplies are more readily available and this is one of the areas that the UK Charity have considered at the last Trustees meeting on the 5th December and are making a small grant to assist the resuscitation the poultry project and extend the dairy herd to produce surplus milk for sale.

For several years, Mother of Peace has placed increasing emphasis of trying to trace the extended families of the children so that the possibility of those family members being able to provide a home for a child can be explored. This is recognised as the best outcome for the children as it allows them to grow up in a more normal family environment and acquire the skills needed to cope as adults. Over 90 children have been reintegrated so far and where the families have been so poor that they could not financially support another child, support has been provided in form of school fees, uniforms and if necessary food supplies. In October 2009, MOPC UK provided funds to support a pilot project to further extend the opportunities for reintegration by building or extending family accommodation and giving seeds and fertiliser to families who were willing to take an additional child but lacked the accommodation to do so and would have needed support to feed and educate that child. The intention being to provide support that would enable the families to become self –sufficient and remove the on-going reliance for support from MOPC. Of the families initially identified, 4 cottages have been completed and these will support 5 children as one of the families has taken 2 siblings. In addition, in the summer of this year small grants were provided to a further 7 families to once again try and improve their ability to provide both for themselves and an additional child. These grants are for a mixture of seed and fertiliser and goats. The results of this project have been very encouraging. In October this year, the last two cottages were formally handed over to the families at a ceremony attended by Stella and Jean, overseas visitors to MOP including John Chiriga plus members of the local community as shown in the photo above.

Whilst so much good work is being done, the impact of the removal of the Zimbabwean dollar has meant that costs have risen dramatically over the last year, estimates are that the introduction of the US dollar has led to an increase in costs of 400-600%. This has meant that MOP’s costs have risen dramatically and as their income could not never rise in the same way , they have not been able to pay workers salaries for some months. This is inevitably leading to significant staffing problems and the resignation of several key members of staff. In response MOP Mutoko is intending to reduce the number of employees and place increased focus on their income generating projects and the reintegration programme.

If you wish to directly raise funds or participate, contact us to discuss your idea and skills etc that you offer or visit us on VirginMoneyGiving.