Empowering vulnerable children with education
The Cherise Makubale Foundation (CMF), is a non-profit organisation that supports orphans, vulnerable children, the youth and women in Zambia. Our work is grass-root based and mainly focuses on educational and sports related projects as a way of stopping the poverty cycle, with particular attention given to the girl child.
Education is the right of every child and is a driver of poverty reduction, empowerment, economic growth, and peaceful and inclusive societies. Educating girls is particularly transformative with some evidence showing that schooling for girls, especially at the secondary level, opens lifelong opportunities.
Support of the Child
Whilst primary school in Zambia is free, availability can be challenging so a lot of community schools have been set up, most of which charge a small fee. With most families in these deprived areas living on less than $2 a day, paying this fee as well as providing school shoes, uniforms, stationery etc can be beyond them. Our aim is to provide this missing support.
Through our organisation, £60 is all it takes to see one child through a full school primary year and £150 to see a child through a secondary school year with special preference given to the girl child.
As a sponsor, you will receive a school report twice a year and a video of the child thanking you.
We want to make sure each of our children make it all the way through primary and secondary thereby giving them a better chance at being productive members of society.
Currently our funding enables us to provide educational stationery including shoes, uniforms and school fees to 32 vulnerable children, whose guardians are living in poverty and can not afford to send their children to school. It’s early days in our mission and we have a list of many more children that need help.
To support a child please click the donate button.
Support of the School
There is no point of helping a child get clothed and fed if the education at the school is substandard and the facilities are poor. We partner with community schools which often need a lot of support. The facilities at these schools are usually not up to standard as they are run by volunteers. We have so far partnered with Misisi Community School in Lusaka and managed to find a charity from Ireland who have built them a brand new 2 classroom block and will soon put electricity and water and a new kitchen for the school.
So this is our second project, running in parallel to our child sponsorship project, to improve the school facilities.
To support this cause please click the donate button.
Support of the Family
Many of the homes where these children live are Grandma led households because most of the parents have either died from disease, moved away in search of work or other social factors leaving the grandmothers to look after these children which can be very challenging. Some of these grandmas have small businesses at the market to help feed the children but it’s quite challenging to then buy all the necessary items for the kids to go to school. So, important as it is for a child to have the means of getting to school, and a school good enough to give a good education, it’s equally important to ensure their family is supported.
So this is our third project: family support.
For £30 a quarter you can help with food programme so as to fill in the gaps and ease the pressure for these women.
So this is our third project: family support.
To support this cause please click the donate button.
Help us to help them
Every child has a right to an education regardless of where they came from.
Whilst we can not help everyone, everyone can help someone.
To quote Mahatma Gandhi... “The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
Future Projects
The Cherise Makubale Foundation Community Centre……
This will be a skills training centre designed to run various educational programs and empowerment workshops for women, the youth, children and the community at large. It will also be a drop off centre for various donations including clothing and will run a feeding program for vulnerable families.
Sadly due to COVID-19 there has been a delay on fundraising.
We are hoping to open beginning 2023, land has been secured and plans approved by the local Council. More details coming soon...but to get a preview here is the draft proposal.
Help us to help them
Every child has a right to an education regardless of where they came from.
Whilst we can not help everyone, everyone can help someone.
Let's make their lives easier.
