CommunityWorx Update Issue Number 1 March 2010
Welcome to CommunityWorx Update (CU), our way of sharing developments in our work with our visitors, friends, partners and colleagues.
CommunityWorx Update is issued as a free information service for people and organisations interested in community development. We aim to share information about innovative projects and innovations in the delivery of community projects. We hope the issue will stimulate an exchange ideas and information, encourage action and collaboration and above all, make us all realise that we can be part of the solution. All it takes is a decision to act.
Trusting that our web readers have visited the other pages on our site and readers of emailed and hard copies will visit our internet site www.ndas-africa.org or read our brochure (available on request), we will skip the self introduction delve straight into the more interesting stuff.
Walking the Talk? Yes!
This year sees us at NDAS take two bold steps in support of community development in Zimbabwe.
First, we are embarking on new social enterprises in support of selected communities. Yes, we share your concern. Why just a few selected communities? We have to work within available resources and will expand as resources become available. Of course, you can contribute to help us get the interventions off the ground and into other communities.
Project 1: Community Access to Markets and Market Information
Our first project focuses on facilitating communities access to product markets for crafts and agricultural produce. We will be sharing more information on how you can contribute to community development by inviting your friends to donate to community projects or by purchasing products from our on-line shop currently under development.
The project will strengthen communities' capacities to pull themselves out of poverty. The project will complement initiatives to increase productivity by ensuring producers have access to markets and market information. We are going a step further.
We will partner with people's own organisations to establish a jointly owned marketing firm that will allow community-based organisations to earn income to strengthen their programmes.
This brings us to the second bold step we are taking. We are putting in personal funds as well as loan financing guaranteed by our assets to get the business going. That is how convinced we are about the need, opportunity and potential of this business idea. The personal stakes are beyond our desire to do good. We cannot afford to fail. More news in the next few weeks.
Project 2: Save a tree. Cook on Waste. Use energy efficiently.
Our second project focuses on the very real threat to the environment in Zimbabwe. A combination of an unreliable power supply system, weak enforcement of environmental regulations, increased unemployment and poverty, and of course access to well treed farm lands is seeing unprecedented destruction of woodlands for heating purposes.
While we cannot prevail on the authorities to enforce by-laws and protect the environment, we realise that the power shortages facing Zimbabwe are here to stay and the environmental damage is permanent. We are embarking on projects to exploit waste biomass as a heating energy source. Yes, waste from agriculture and forestry can be processed into cheap clean heating briquettes that reduce the need to cut down live trees. Zimbabwe has an abundancy of such waste.
The cost of equipment and limited knowledge are the two main barriers. We intend to implement a model addressing household level production of fuel briquettes and institutional users of wood and coal. We are seeking a combination of grant and loan finance to implement project in peri-urban and high-density urban areas.
The second component of this project will promote energy efficient stoves. Conditions in Zimbabwe at the moment are favourable for such an initiative.
Observe the number of illegal roadside firewood sellers, the truckloads of firewood coming into Harare, the number of security guards cyclying from the low density areas with a logs and twigs strapped to the bicycle, and that fellow harvesting 'dry' branches from that nice tree outside your gate... wonder how schools, hotels, hospitals, tobacco farmers and all those users of boiler equipment users are coping with poor electricity supplies, expensive cooking gas, and unreliable coal supplies... wonder how households that have gone for months without electricity are cooking. See the need? Interestingly, we all can do something to curb the cutting down of trees for heating purposes. It begins with improving energy efficiency for any type of energy used.
Further opportunity
In a few days we will provide links to some origional stories with 'interesting' perspectives on what you and I would consider as serious environmental threats particularly the invasion of Zimbabwe's water system by water hyacinth (good looking invasive plant originating from South America) and the environmental damage caused by increased tobacco farming. Water hyacinth can be briquetted into heating fuel. The ash from the fuel is a good fertiliser. Just the cost of exploitation is high. Any takers?
Tobacco farming is destructive to the environment when environmental regulations are not enforced. Imagine the market possibilities with enforcement of regulations and the ready availability of fuel made from a waterway pollutant.
We would love to learn from others about community efforts to address the environmental damage being caused by water pollution, cultivaton of wetlands and mining.
Project 3: Community Charity Challenge
Zimbabwe has an unusual problem. Having brought back goods into the supermarkets through the adoption of multiple currencies (shelving of the local currency in favour of foreign currency, mostly US$, British Pound, and South African Rand), Zimbabwe has a new shortage. The shrtage of change. usually any change less tan a dollar cannot be given unless South African coins are available (a rarity). So what do Zimbabweans do?
Well, we get credit notes redeemable only in the issuing store. Alternatively, we get items we do not really need, to the value of the change. So we get sweets, chocolate, and pens. The credit notes? Personally, I have never been good at managing them and taking them back to the store. The result - potentially huge free income for shop owners. Of course you can see where this leads.... there is no incentive to make find South African coins for change!
The opportunity
What if, instead of taking sweets or the likely-to-be-lost credit notes we gave the money to charitable causes?
If we get 50 000 shoppers to give just USD60c per week we can raise USD30 000 weekly. That is USD120 000 per month. With that kind of money imagine what we can do for children's homes. Imagine what we could achieve for education if the shops would be kind enough to give the cash instead of insisting on goods. The protests from shop owners are predictable...'when bills exceed a round figure by a few cents we do not ask customers for such small amounts!' Well, we could exclude from donations any amounts less than 6 cents.
The Community Challenge
We plan on finding a partner who can do the legwork and be present in shops to encourage consumers to give their change to charity. We will spice it up by making the supermarkets partners and running competitions between neighbourhoods. Of course, our neighbourhood will win because it has a very popular supermarket that opens 24 hours. People come from far and wide. Soon we will be telling them how their money is helping our community do more for charity.
Zimbabwe has a considerable population in the diaspora. Maybe we could include the 'community' in the challenge?
Do you have ideas to encourage people to do more to uplift their communities?
Announcements
This section is reserved for news about CommunityWorx and summaries of our Development Dialogue Zimbabwe series. This being the first issue, there are no announcements. We trust in the next issue we will have exiting news about new partnerships and progress on our plans to support community initiative.
We look forward to your feedback and active engagement.
Till next time - Keep well, safe and innovating for a better future for all.