By Bellah Zulu, ACNS

Kachere is the name of a local savannah woodland fig tree in Eastern Zambia which, in times past, had three important uses: medicinal, a source of food, and a place of Indaba where local leaders would gather to resolve conflicts. 

When the Anglican Church set up its social development programme, it adopted the name of the tree because health, economic development and local conflict resolution are three main pillars of Kachere Development Programme’s (KDP) activities. 

Though KDP only began as a pilot project in 2011, it has already made an enormous impact in people’s lives. In 2012, the Southern Africa Trust and Mail & Guardian Newspaper, in partnership with African Grantmakers Network, awarded KDP the Investing in the Future and Drivers of Change Award for distinguished service in promoting rural community transformation.

Such service includes helping more than 700 orphans and vulnerable children in primary and secondary schools to successfully complete their education. 

Programme director Fr Dennis Milanzi said, “Poverty has forced many vulnerable families to withdraw their children from schools and instead beg on the streets or engage in child labour to help with family survival.”

He explained that about 10 per cent of the population are street children, and most of them come from vulnerable families. So KDP promotes a microcredit support system to their households as an alternative source of income keeping them in school

Another poverty-related threat to education, particularly for girls, is a lack of sanitation in schools. Part of KDP’s work to improve health and hygiene in local communities has included building 36 modernised pit latrines for schools in the province. 

"Lack of good sanitation is one of the major contributing factors for the high school dropout rates especially for the girl child,” said Fr Milanzi. “Bad toilets are a big source of concern for the girls because as they grow up, good sanitation becomes a priority.

Dying for love

Girls in Eastern Zambia are also at risk of sexual violence, and KDP has been a leading advocate against gender-based violence in the country. Fr Milanzi explained that KDP operates in a cultural environment where “some married women have always taken it that physical violence in married life is a symbol of true love,” and it has the challenge of trying to counter the perception. 

“This [myth] has resulted in many women dying due to the trauma and abuse suffered through upholding marriage promises,” he said. “This trend has to be addressed because the code of silence on such matters has led to women dying prematurely.”

The Women’s Co-ordinator for the programme, Christabel Mbewe reported that thanks to sensitisation work, “a lot of women have come to know their rights, although sex workers still remain a very vulnerable group because they operate in an illegal industry and cannot report to the police even when they constantly get beaten and abused.

“We have picked up about 100 sex workers from the streets who are currently undergoing behavior-change lessons,” she said. “They are also undergoing skills training in such areas as tailoring and peanut-butter making.”

Churches of the Anglican Communion are increasingly speaking out against the abuse of children and women, and ending gender-based violence remains a priority. In a statement to the 57th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women last year, Anglicans highlighted the work the Church is doing towards “preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls which is building on action already being taken across the Anglican Communion taking into account local experience, cultures, need and expertise.”

The Communion has been particularly active in awareness-raising; advocacy; education to change attitudes and behaviours that lead to violence; providing care and reintegration into society for survivors of violence; and even working with perpetrators of violence to help prevent them reoffending.

Harmful traditions

The work of the Kachere Development Programme to end gender-based violence in Zambia reflects this. Yet KDP staff members are also faced with harmful cultural practices that hinder girls’ education opportunities and future careers.

In their report from 2012, KDP revealed, “Among some tribes in our catchment area, initiation ceremonies for girls who reach puberty has disadvantaged them from attending schools as they are put in seclusion for about a month.”

It added, “This has made them more vulnerable because at the end of the initiation period, they would have lost out on their education and career opportunities.”

The report also alludes to the notion that such ceremonies play a major role in the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. It argues that some people take advantage of the young girls for what it termed as “testing the ability” of the recently taught girl.

Women as cheap labour

The Eastern Province of Zambia is one of the major food baskets for the nation. The area is predominantly a farming community and women account for 83% of small-scale farmers. The major crops include maize, which is the staple food, groundnuts, cotton, and tobacco. Despite the majority of the 1.7 million people in the province being farmers, poverty levels are still high with about 78% of the rural communities living in abject poverty.

The vulnerability of women, and the social expectation that they are primarily responsible for meeting the needs of their family, means that they continue to be used as cheap labour. To address this challenge, KDP has introduced an initiative called Reducing Poverty and Deforestation through Food Security and Agroforestry among Self-Help Groups.

One of the beneficiaries of the Self Help Groups is Elina Ngoma, a 56-year-old widow who suffered a lot of stigma and oppression in the decade since her husband’s death. 

Mrs Ngoma explained that in 2010 she joined a Self Help Group and started saving and even accessing small loans: “I managed to send my two elderly children to school and used part of the money to increase my business. I have even forgotten about the miseries of being a widow.”

Fr Milanzi said by 2012, in just two years, the Self Help Groups program has 46 groups with a total membership of 806 women. “The Self Help Groups are now better equipped with knowledge and skills on capital, savings and loans and managed to save over US$15,000,” he said.

Building on a legacy

For Zambia’s Anglican Church, the Kachere tree is more than just the namesake for its social development programme, it also has historical significance. When, in 1910, African missionary, Leonard Kamungu was sent by the Universities’ Missions to Central Africa (UMCA) to establish an Anglican presence in Zambia he planted a Kachere tree at a place called Msoro. The tree is still standing today.

Kachere Development Programme has continued to build on the legacy left by such early missionaries. It strives to improve health standards, reduce illiteracy levels, and increase self-sustainability and sufficiency among the local populations while continuing to propagate the gospel of Christ through integral evangelisation.

It seems that, for many Zambians in the east of the country, the Kachere has become a tree of life.

For more information about this project visit http://www.kachere.org