Lloyd Shunje
A church and two humanitarian organisations have collaborated to build an orphanage soon to house 40 vulnerable children near Sikato Primary School in Masvingo.
Cornerstone Fellowship International, Window of Hope HIV and Aids organisation and Change a life Foundation are already at an advanced stage in building Emmanuel Homestead, which they expect to be completed by next month.
Having started in October last year, the homestead is expected to house 40 children and 10 foster parents, and the children will receive tutorials in life skills through agriculture, animal husbandry, carpentry and formal education.
Emmanuel Homestead executive director and Cornerstone Fellowship Pastor Alexander Chibwana said children from the home will attend their primary education at Sikato Primary School and there is also Chirichoga Secondary in Nemamwa. Plans are also in place for the construction of psycho social campsite that will help rape victims and the community at large.
“We are responding to the request by department of social service to have another orphanage home in the province as Alpha cottage cannot accommodate the whole province on its own,” Chibwana said.
“As the church we have collaborated with Window of Hope to have this project to help accommodate orphans and vulnerable children in the province as the load will be too heavy for Alpha cottage to bear the load alone. In addition we were receiving funding from Don Wooden of Change a life Foundation” said Chibwana.
“The project was expected to be through in May but it can be delayed as the labour is comes from volunteers, we only have four volunteers at the moment who help us in brick moulding. The community also helped us in planting crops with the assistance of caregivers” added Chibwana.
Volunteers are helping in the construction of the three blocks that are part of the homestead and they have so far roofed one of the blocks and the other two are nearing completion.
One of the volunteers, Verengai Chipika told Tell Zimbabwe that he is pleased to work for the church as ‘God will be the one to pay for his sweat’. He indicated that he has moved from his home in Bushmead to stay at the centre for the security.
“We are happy to work at the house of God, to build this historic home. We started from the beginning and we will be with them till them till the end of the project, currently l am staying to help monitoring activities at the project” said Chipika.
Chibwana bemoaned the unavailability of resources to cater for the volunteers’ incentives as the number of volunteers continues to drop due to lack of motivation.
