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Zimbabwe is struggling through the most difficult times since its independence in 1980. Millions of people are suffering. Almost one in five adults is HIV-positive, placing Zimbabwe at the heart of the epidemic. The country has the highest inflation in the world: a stunning 20 million percent per year. Once the bread basket of southern Africa, it now has severe shortages of basic food supplies.
Mercy Corps has worked in Zimbabwe since 2002, partnering with communities and local agencies in six of the country's ten provinces. Our programs provide humanitarian and development assistance to more than 300,000 people. We're strengthening food and livelihood security, increasing access to water and sanitation and supporting vulnerable children.
Responding to Urban Vulnerability
Mercy Corps is leading a consortium of partners in a five-year program to restore the dignity and reduce the suffering of 7,500 households in six urban areas. This first-of-its-kind collaboration aims to make a real difference for the urban poor through coordinated action.
In addition to managing the consortium, Mercy Corps also carries out activities in one of the urban areas. These include our Child Protection through Education Assistance project, distributing food baskets to 1,000 households and promoting urban gardens. Our project helps orphans and vulnerable children in 28 schools obtain an education and provides much-needed food security for targeted households.
Helping Orphans and At-Risk Children
Mercy Corps has been working with Zimbabwe's orphans and other vulnerable children since 2005, helping community groups better meet the children's needs. We're supporting and protecting 50,000 vulnerable children, many of whom are AIDS orphans.
Mercy Corps is creating and training child protection committees to provide essential services to 5,000 children. We're helping the committees get small grants to meet the children's food, health and educational needs. We're also helping a children's home obtain essential supplies and produce a newsletter in which children share their drawings, poems and stories and learn about health, hygiene and safety.
Our program provides 2,000 vulnerable children with psychosocial support through after-school clubs where children receive HIV/AIDS education and access to sports facilities. We partner closely with the Government of Zimbabwe on these projects.
Enhancing Food Security
We are improving the food security of 90,000 people in three districts of southeastern Zimbabwe, enhancing health and livelihoods while lowering dependence on food aid.
Our consortium is training agricultural extension officers and environmental health technicians; establishing and supporting community food and nutrition clubs; building and rehabilitating community wells; improving irrigation; and helping farmers build market linkages for produce and non-timber forest products.
Once irrigation water is available, farmers can increase their yields and grow crops all year. Food clubs teach vulnerable households about gardening, tree nurseries and beekeeping; woodlots and beehives; and how to process and market honey, vegetables and herbs. We focus on helping vulnerable families, especially the chronically ill, meet their own nutrition needs first.
By diversifying their livelihoods, vulnerable families broaden their economic activities away from monoculture maize production. With a broader range of food and income sources, families are better able to withstand shocks such as drought and price spikes.
People Living With Disabilities
Mercy Corps is working with disabled people's organizations to build their capacity to advocate and lobby for the rights of their members, support behavior change related to HIV and promote self-reliance. Six organizations are receiving capacity-building support to strengthen their ability to collaborate with 180 people receiving vocational and business skills training.
Clean Water, Sanitation — and Information
Clean water, sanitation and hygiene education go together. That's why we have conducted an integrated program in Zimbabwe since 2005. Our presence continues to ease the impact of cholera outbreaks that are increasing in frequency throughout Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe's economic decline has made it extra-challenging for the government to provide basic goods and services to its citizens. Deteriorating hospitals and rural clinics have resulted in deaths due to waterborne disease, and crumbling infrastructure in both urban and rural areas limits Zimbabweans' access to clean water and sanitation facilities.
We're helping 60,000 vulnerable households gain easier access to potable water and sanitation. We're also working with communities to construct water catchments at village schools and health clinics to capture and store rain water for use by 21,000 people. We have hired local residents to build hundreds of latrines at rural primary schools and rehabilitate and construct wells in 100 villages. In the urban areas we are rehabilitating 55 communal sanitation blocks, each of which serves 400 people. Mercy Corps is promoting important lessons on health and hygiene, training 5,600 people, including environmental health technicians, in methods that create positive behavior change towards good health and hygiene practices.
In conjunction with UNICEF, Mercy Corps distributed 75,000 supply kits to households at risk of cholera during a recent outbreak. Mercy Corps also provided resources to local authorities to enable their full participation in the cholera response, and will continue to engage on this issue in the future.
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