South East Friends of CAFOD Event at Knole Academy

Saturday 28 April 2018 saw a group of 12 CAFOD supporters and staff coming together for the first South East Friends of CAFOD event at Knole Academy.

Sarah Lady Gough, CAFOD Supporter welcomed everyone to Knole Academy and talked about her motivation to support the school and CAFOD. She spoke of the power of education to mould young people’s lives – something she admires about the work of both organisations. Lady Gough told us about the hard work of Knole Academy in shaping the students to face the world and treat one another with dignity and respect. She also linked this to CAFOD’s work overseas and the focus on young people and skills for later life.

Much of our work is with young people, giving them the tools that they need to access opportunities their parents never had

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Sally Kitchener, Content Writer talked about her recent trip to Zimbabwe to visit families that will be supported by this year’s Lent Appeal. She visited communities in the Binga and Gokwe Diocese, where Caritas has been delivering water and nutrition projects for 15 years.

She reflected on her experience of driving to the project and the change from the city to incredibly rural areas, as the level of poverty in the country became abundantly clearer. The roads were so rough that one day Sally had to stop and change tyres three times.

Sally had the opportunity to spend two days with Marian and her family, shadowing them in their daily life, learning about how they farm, what the kids aspire to be, and how their lives have changed, thanks to CAFOD supporters.

Marian wakes up early to make porridge for her family, before tending to her garden. Sally was shocked by how much Marian’s life has changed since the project got underway. Before the garden, there were always months in the year where she would never have enough food; cyclical famines are still very common in some parts of the world – especially in countries without a developed infrastructure, or a strong network of support from the state. Countries like Zimbabwe are also suffering from climate change disproportionately compared to countries in the Global North – Marian lived in fear of not knowing what might happen to her kids.

When her oldest child Tawanda, now 21, was 8, she remembers leaving him at home, so she could work to pay for dinner. When she came back, he would be sitting in the exact spot she had left him; he was so weak from malnutrition that he could not move.

Svondo, Marian’s youngest son (7), could not be more different.

With the help of a good, nutritious diet, Svondo is talkative and full of energy. When Sally met him, he could barely sit still. Sally recalled sitting with Marian while she made peanut butter – every so often Svondo would sneak a little peanut butter out of the bowl to eat while Marian wasn’t looking (or was pretending not to look).

CAFOD worked with Caritas Gokwe to provide Marian with a community garden plot to grow vegetables, and the nutrition training needed to make sure her children had access to a proper diet. Thanks to the work of a previous Lent Appeal, Marian’s younger children don’t have to grow up as hungry as Tawanda, but there’s still hope for people like Tawanda too.

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With his newfound farming skills, Tawanda has hope for a future where he can support a family of his own

Marian wasn’t the only person who had taken an interest in farming; Tawanda has his own vegetable garden, and recently sold some of his crops. At 21 years old, he held money in his hand for the first time. He was overwhelmed by being given the opportunity to support himself in this way.

Marian’s husband, Kiniel, used the skills he developed from growing vegetables at the community garden to grow cotton on his own land and used the profit to buy a solar panel for their house, as there is no national grid this far out in Zimbabwe. Using the panel, they can light their house in the evening, which means that Marian’s children can study in the evening.

Sally said her visit to the community garden was a highlight of the trip. She told us it was a joy to arrive at the garden CAFOD helped set up and see so many people. From 4am in the morning there is activity; she saw women arriving early to water the vegetables. Kids were running around everywhere – it was hard to tell which child was from which family, because they were all playing together. There was a real sense of community and camaraderie; the 21 families who worked on the garden helped one another out and looked after the elderly people’s vegetables when they were unable to do so.

Among other projects, Sally also visited Mtora Mission Hospital. This is a place for expectant mothers to come in their final stages of pregnancy, so that they are closer to the district hospital when they are ready to give birth. Some women come from as far as 60 miles away, so they do not risk going into labour during the journey to the hospital. Four years ago, a bucket of water meant a 15-minute walk, and then another one with a full bucket of water – not an easy task for a heavily pregnant woman. CAFOD funded a water storage tank on the premises, as well as a vegetable garden to ensure the women are healthy enough to give birth safely.

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James Marchant, Deputy Head of Region for Africa told us that he used to live in Africa for three years and his daughter was born in Harare 19 years ago, so the continent is very close to his heart.

He gave an overview of CAFOD’s work and strategy in Africa, where we have a presence in 15 countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia and Eritrea. In total there are 115 staff in Africa, excluding Ethiopia which is looked after by Trocaire, our Irish counterpart, with whom we have a strong working relationship.

We have a holistic approach, focusing on development, emergencies and advocacy. Advocacy can range from us working in the UK to open doors for people overseas, through to helping people overseas to get their voice heard and advising them how to develop a clear campaign for the actions they want.

Our partnership approach covers 350 partners worldwide including 150 in Africa – most of our African partners are Church based, which gives us a broad reach that other agencies do not have. This allows us to work with those in greatest need, the people others have forgotten.

Without our partnership with CARITAS Gokwe, the dam we raised money for in the 2012 Lent Appeal could never have been constructed

Our strong partnership with helps us to develop programmes across Africa to strengthen each national Caritas and extend and enhance their skills and resources. Trocaire and Caritas are key partners in Africa, with whom we work all over the continent; close relationships also include those with SCIAF, MISEREOR of and Vastenactie of the .

A three-to-five year country strategy paper is devised for each country in which we work. We review it once a year to ensure we are meeting the expectations we and our partners have set.

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In comparison to other organisations, we put a lot more focus on partnership. Partnership is our main strength and asset – it allows us to reach people in the most remote areas, it allows us to tap into their local knowledge, and they already have the trust of the community, so we can work together with them to build on what they are doing. They know the needs of the community – we are not coming in to determine their needs. They can identify the priority, whether that is agriculture, HIV treatment, emergency response or governance. Together we can support people we could not help if we acted alone.

One of the reasons that a partnership approach is such an important aspect of CAFOD’s mission is that by working with local partners, training them and working alongside them, we can empower them to one day be able to operate without our help. To make this a reality we are working with the START network which focuses on ‘shifting the power’ from outside charity to local partner. We help to build the capacity of local organisations who do the work, so that they can learn the skills they need to have more of a voice in the community, with local authorities and with the government. We also teach them to write proposals for funding, monitor progress, and write reports, as well as how to set up trustee boards.

Our projects do not just feed communities, they bring them together. At Chileya Community Garden parents watch over other children as well as their own

When we raise funds, it is important to seek funding from institutions and individuals that share our goals, rather than trying to work around what they want. Above all, what we do must fit with what the communities need. We also try to cut costs wherever possible to contain and reduce what we spend to be responsible with money that supporters have entrusted to us.

James spoke about the quality of our work and why CAFOD is different. Working through the Church gives us the reach and the power to make things happen, particularly for people who otherwise would be forgotten.

We have used Laudato Si’ as an influential tool in shaping our work – listening to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor as Pope Francis has asked us to do. It helps to tie us to our sustainable development goals and our principles. This is an incredible resource, which other charities without our Catholic framework do not have.

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Questions and Answers

Q: In James’ presentation he brought up building the capacity of local organisations – have any of them followed through on this?

A: A few examples James brought to light were partners in Congo and Goma – they have grown from almost nothing to an organisation nearly as large as CAFOD. BRAC, an international development organisation based in Bangladesh was small, but in part due to CAFOD’s assistance is now a huge organisation and a leading NGO.

We try wherever possible to put ourselves out of business; we share skills, boost capacity and try and leave our partners in a position where they can operate by themselves. We recently withdrew from Tanzania as we didn’t need to be as involved as we were. James hopes that Zimbabwe will one day be another example of a country that we can pull out of, but as there are such strong historical ties to the UK, we may have to remain and transition to a different kind of relationship.

Fathers pose with their babies at a New Mothers Club in Kariyangwe. From the first Fast Day to now, our work has been about empowering new parents.

Q: How closely do we work with Caritas?

A: We are Caritas and , but we go by the name of CAFOD because of the history tied to the name – we think it’s important to reflect the historical links to the first Family Fast Day set up by Catholic mothers in the 1960s, and do not want to sacrifice that part of our identity for the sake of a ‘brand consistency’ with other Caritas organisations. SCIAF and Trocaire, in

6 and respectively, are like us in that despite their name, they fall within the Caritas network, and we share an office with them in Ethiopia.

There are more than 160 Caritas agencies in 120 countries, and most of our work is done in partnership with other Caritas agencies. If we are looking to work somewhere new, our first port of call is often the local Caritas office; it’s a good way to gain access to a country quickly, and they will already have a good idea of the work that needs to be done.

Q: What is the UK Aid Match, and do you get other government funding?

A: The UK Government set up the UK Aid Match Scheme in 2012 to make sure that the public had more of a direct say in what overseas aid gets funded. The government pledges to match donations to a certain project up to an agreed amount.

In the first year Match Funding was introduced, there was no limit to how much would be doubled by the government, and as a result they matched £9.2 million raised by Catholics in England and Wales. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement – we get funding for projects we otherwise would not be able to run, and the government can distribute money through our network of Church partners that they would otherwise not have access to.

Institutional funding is a huge source of funding for us – institutions such as Comic Relief, Big Lottery, other development agencies, the UK government and the European Union contribute to our overseas work. We will face some challenges with EU funding soon due to Brexit, and we currently cannot apply for funding for any projects that run beyond December 2018. However, there are other Caritas agencies still in the EU who can apply for the funding that we can then collaborate with, so we are finding ways to keep our projects open after Brexit.

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