Faith Foundation was founded in 2020 and has been operating in Zimbabwe ever since. As the Foundation advances gender equality by empowering Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) in Zimbabwe, it actively advocates for social, economic and psychological backbones that support the livelihoods of many girls and young women in various underprivileged communities.
The Foundation has three major pillars of proactive community building; they are proud of their established Youth Clubs that focus on improving the youth’s rights to accessible and informed choices, providing social and economic empowerment discussions to uplift local livelihoods and equip community members with life skills to strengthen social resilience; they have Skills Trainings for AGYW who are unemployed and out of school to benefit from the foundation’s recurring empowerment training programmes aimed at equipping them with personal finance skills and boost their entrepreneurial mind sets to ultimately make girls and young women, economically active; and lastly, they offer Female Hygiene & Health Workshops that facilitate accessibility to menstrual products and information through the distribution of sustainable menstrual kits and sexual reproductive health seminars directed to AGYW. This last initiative has advanced gender equality by ensuring that women in the community are informed and are knowledgeable of basic rights to prevent reproductive health risks.
Our Partnership
Faith Foundation has been part of Aflatoun’s partner network since January, 2022. In harmony with Aflatoun’s vision, the Foundation supports Aflatoun’s focus on empowering children and the youth with social and financial education, to make a positive change for a sustainable future. Coming together as partners has nurtured joint efforts to provide Social and Financial Education (SFE) with our curriculum Aflateen +, which has a focus on gender perspective, alongside the simultaneous implementation of the Foundations’ own projects, equipping the youth with gender studies, and other valuable topical issues covered by the SFE curriculum.
As underlined by the Foundation, social and economic inequality is the main cause of poverty in developing nations such as Zimbabwe. The scarce understanding of one’s rights and obligations as well as a lack of knowledge of personal finance are two factors that contribute to generational inequality. As a result, Social and Financial Education has become a vital toolkit, especially in Zimbabwe, as it equips children and youth with the necessary skills and resources, they need to end the cycle of poverty. Financial Education is not included in the national education system therefore children are not acquiring these crucial skills in schools. Investing in Financial Literacy alongside Aflatoun International has encouraged, renewed capacity building efforts born by local initiatives in underprivileged areas in Zimbabwe.
“We are proud of the implementation of the Aflateen+ programme. Through this we successfully held two Training of Trainers where 30 educators were trained on gender sensitive teaching and were equipped to deliver social and financial education using active learning methods. In the first year of implementation Faith Foundation established a total of 11 clubs with 463 members enrolled in 8 communities around Harare, Zimbabwe. Our organisation and facilitators are well known in the communities and the convenient locations of the clubs have helped us make an impact in the community. Part of our program included enterprise visits and offers adolescents the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by businessmen/women.” – (Faith Foundation Community Member).
“We are also proud of our skills training program. During the cooking lessons the beneficiaries engage in practices and discuss SRHR and violence prevention. Members are also encouraged to form savings groups” – (Faith Foundation Community Member).
Planting the Seeds to Nurture Gender Inclusive, Financial Entrepreneurs.
Simba (17) joined the Mabvuku-Eastview, Youth Club with a few of his peers. Throughout the activities, he enjoyed learning the topics in the ‘My body, my choice’ session of the Aflateen+ curriculum, especially the part on Healthy Relationships and Deal Breakers, two very relevant topics at his age and among his peers.
“Mjolo hausikuendeka / (relationships are hard)”, he shared with us.
Moreover, while learning about Life Skills, his club also started learning about responsible money management and about personal finances. After understanding about different sources of income in the class on the lesson ‘Money streams’, Simba was eager to set up his own small social enterprise. He started selling sweets in his neighbourhood, with the goal of buying a laptop one day.
