Community groups help raise Bikita villagers’ living standards About 150 people from Gangare in Bikita are set to receive various household goods, farming inputs and livestock as part of a local community group year-end asset sharing on October 24 this year. Announcing the momentous occasion for the villagers, the chairman and founder of the Fushai Chamas community group, Ladislous Makazinge said the 150 people who are members of 30 savings clusters of five individuals each will share kitchen utensils, household furniture, farming inputs and implements, cash and cattle. “This is the ninth year that Fushai Chamas has been involved in asset sharing. For the first four years we shared asset twice in a year. People then concentrated on kitchen utensils, blankets, other household goods and small livestock such as chickens and goats because this was soon after the economic hardships of 2008 and was accompanied with a drought. “Then we moved into farming implements, ploughs, cultivators, harrows and heifers. Later we moved to scotch carts, roofing and building materials and fencing. The idea is to help improve the living standards of each individual,” said Makazinge, a retired building contractor. Ten members of Tazvida and Kufuma Ishungu groups will share 10 heifers while the five members of Kudadisa Group will each receive two bags of compound D and three bags of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizers and $500 each. Other group members will receive wardrobes, sets of sofas, farm implements, kitchen utensils, bedding, other household goods roofing and building materials, kitchen furniture and bundles of mesh wire. Makazinge said to become members of Fushai Chamas, the villagers form clusters of five individuals and raise initial capital according to their capabilities. They also decide on what they would want to achieve when the year comes to an end. The money is then loaned initially among members and later to other people seeking finance at 20 percent interest. At the end of the year they will decide what to buy and share. “To avoid conflicts, we do not allow members of the same family to belong to the same cluster. They have to join different groups with different plans to avoid misunderstandings. It is the same thing when a group membership exceeds five people. The main Fushai Chamas committee has to sit and deliberate before an exception is granted and such groups are kept under constant monitoring to ensure they keep to the straight and narrow,” said Makazinge. “Groups are categorized according to their plans and capability to raise the required funds.” Besides being members of Fushai Chamas, 36 villagers are also members of Chamas Seed Bank where the farmers contribute grain at harvest in order to have seed to plant during the next season. Makazinge said in one year they had surplus grain which was used to brew traditional beer for sale among the villagers. This helped to raise $21 000 which the group members used to buy 36 heifers that were shared among members. “In January (2015), we plan to give each member money to enable them to send their children to school. Those with no school-going children will get cash to use they wish.” Chamas Gardening which will host the asset sharing event on October 24 has 55 members who grow vegetables for own consumption and for sale in a community garden which has been running for the past 10 years. Makazinge said over the past four years the gardening club has been helping pay school fees for two underprivileged children forwarded to them by the authorities at Chisungo Secondary School. Each member is also given enough to pay fees for one child while plans are underway that the Chamas Seed Bank start sponsoring underprivileged children from the local primary school in 2015, he said. From the Fushai Chamas membership are drawn 115 members of the Chamas Funeral Services designed to give each other decent burials. Each member contributes $2 monthly installments. Makazinge said: “We decided to give each other decent burial and each person must be buried in a coffin worth $550. At the funeral we provide teas and lunch while members that prepare and feed the people are paid $10 each by the funeral service. We provide two goats for relish.” He said the Chamas clubs were started after Care International came to Gangare and trained villagers in running community clubs after they noted what he his family of two wives and 15 children were doing to earn a living after he left urban life to settle in the rural area in 2004. “I was involved in gardening and farming with my family when care moved in 2007 and taught us the methods we are using today to run our projects,” he said.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 09:16:49 +0000
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