It starts with a Zambian school

I am Mele, and I work for the Zambian Rainbow Development Foundation (ZRDF) the strategic delivery partner of Ripple Effect in Zambia. I am based in the rural districts of Mkushi and Luano, central Zambia, working in communities where poverty is deep rooted.

Zambia has one of the lowest life expectancies and highest death rates in the world, mainly due to high levels of HIV/AIDS. Two thirds of people in Zambia live below the poverty line, often living on less than £1.50 per day. In the rural farming districts of Mkushi and Luano, 40% of people live on less than £1 per day, with many families not having enough to eat. As the climate crisis has worsened it has become even harder for families to fight hunger and poverty as crops have been destroyed by erratic weather.

At ZRDF, along with improving health, improving livelihoods and empowering women, education is at the heart of everything we do in our projects in Zambia. Our work starts with building a primary school, the building of the school brings together the whole community and we know that inspiring everyone to work together improves the chances of a brighter future for all.

Everyone builds the school classrooms together - a house for the teachers and separate toilet blocks for males and females. When these buildings are built, it unlocks Zambian government funding, providing the money for a fully trained teacher and resources for the school including books and teaching materials. The funding from the Zambian Government ensures that all the buildings met the set criteria and are built to a high standard, benefitting everyone in the community.

The school buildings become a focal point in the community, meetings take place there, it is used as a community centre and our teams use the schools as a base to support families to learn more, grow more and sell more. With a school nearer home, more children attend regularly as they don’t have to travel long distances to go to school. Families can access computers after hours for information, or to take part in education programmes and learning new skills to improve their prospects.

Another benefit of the building project is that previously girls would often miss school during their menstrual cycle, but now that there are separate blocks for men and women this is no longer an issue and girls are attending school more regularly. Tied in with this is that when girls attend school regularly it helps reduce teenage pregnancies and early marriages, helping them to achieve their dreams.

In the wider community hygiene is improved as each school has a bore hole, providing clean water for everyone in the local area. Alongside training on handwashing this has helped to improve the health of families, and children are less likely to miss school through illness.

On the school site, farms are set up and orchards planted, teaching children how to grow fruit and vegetables as well as providing much needed nutrition. The children can pass on the skills they have learnt to their family, ensuring that from the school the ripple effect of positive change continues.

• 1,845 farmers have been supported in sustainable farming techniques since 2013.
• Project participants’ income has risen from £30 per year to £396.

• Project participants’ household nutrition has risen from 1 to 3 meals per day.
• 100 farmers have also had support to set up beekeeping enterprises.
• Since 2014, the number of trained teachers in our communities has increased from 24 to 153 and the numbers of pupils attending school has risen from 640 to 8,200.

If you would like to find out more about the work we do supporting families in Zambia and across rural Africa, please get in touch.