During a Monitoring and Evaluation session with members from the United Church of Zambia, we heard about the many wonderful that UCZ has been doing.
Below a testimony from Deaconness Charity Mutambo (2016-2017 TFT Diploma course)
TFT has been used as a tool to open my eyes and mind to see opportunities surrounding my life. The training made me gain self-confidence and believe in myself. I’m able to see life with a positive mindset and approach issues in a different way compared to before training.
One of the things I’ve been doing is a project of women empowerment. With this Women Empowerment Project, we are doing Village Banking and self-help projects where we are bringing women together, they form groups and they start saving. From their savings, they start giving each other loans. So this project has been there since the time I did my training until now and so far I have formed about 75 groups of 20 people each. The stories of these women have changed. Women are able now to build their houses, they are able to take their children to school, and they are able to provide food on the table.
Another project was the provision of wheelchairs to people living with disabilities, seeing that people with disabilities can also contribute to their well-being and that of their families, even at community level and the nation at large. I sourced wheelchairs so that they can move from one place to another so that they can do whatever they can manage to bring food on the table.
I also advocate on alcohol and drug abuse. I started speaking and conducting seminars and workshops on alcohol and substance abuse.
We looked into the effects of social media, human trafficking among youth and discovered there are so many factors contributing to moral decay and poverty is one of them. Parental care has reduced because both parents are busy looking for food while children take care of themselves and tv and social media are teaching children. Conducting seminars have shown we can bring children to where they should be.
Promoting girl-child education with an NGO, Family Matters (an organisation that promotes education of the girlchild) They bring the parents and girls together, started training them. They train the girls how to conduct themselves at home and how to relate to their parents. They train parents the importance of educating a girl-child. This project motivates both parents and girls.
Networking with other stakeholders: With the skills gotten from TFT, I found to achieve what I want, I cannot work alone so I seek stakeholders, including Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC).
We also work with health and government officials. You need to identify the people in your area who are doing the same things, and are promoting what you are.
In Lusaka Presbytery: 12-13 diaconeal workers in different districts plan and work together. Including a project a project on peanut butter-making, one for tailoring and designing, jam-making, making tomato sauce in the area of value-addition. We do it together so that it can be seen diaconeal workers are doing this, rather than doing it alone on small-scale. I have been able to do this because of the skills gotten from TFT.
