http://www.glascofoundation.org (Close)

How do you build a school and houses for Zambian orphans when the few available building materials are terribly expensive? When the Zambian Children’s Fund built its first house for children who were orphaned by the AIDS epidemic, the staggering escalation of construction costs made future buildings seem almost impossible.

In an effort to help the dream of building a school and houses become reality, members of the Ithaca (NY) Working Group decided that there might be a way to reduce costs. They began researching building materials in regions of the world where resources are scarce. On the Internet, they found the KickStart Company which develops and builds tools to help people in Third World countries overcome poverty. One such tool is the low-cost Block Press, capable of compacting local soils to produce building blocks. Could this tool be used at Chishawasha?

Further investigation, including soil-testing on the orphanage property, revealed that unskilled labor could operate the press, that the main ingredient is local soil, and that blocks produced would be stronger than concrete blocks for a cost of at least 50% less. The project might be possible! With the press, workers could produce 300 blocks a day, using soil mixed with a little (10%) cement and water. After seven days of drying, the blocks would be ready to use.

The Glassco Foundation provided funds so that a block press could be purchased from nearby Kenya and air-shipped to Lusaka, Zambia. The press cost was only $525, but the cost of handling and shipping more than doubled that amount.

In early March 2006, a large crate containing the Block Press arrived on site and a few days later, the first four blocks were produced. Since then, laborers including volunteers, staff, older children, and the construction crew have been compacting and stockpiling blocks. These were used to form the permanent walls of the school building that will replace temporary grass-hut classrooms. Construction started in the spring and was completed by the end of September.

How do you build a Zambian orphanage school? One red earthen block at a time. And, how do you make earthen blocks? Mix soil with a little concrete and water; then compact it in the amazing Block Press. (Close)

When Daniel arrived at Chishawasha Children’s Home in July 2001, he was extremely dirty and covered with large, oozing sores. The policemen who found the abandoned boy said he was two years old, but he was the size of a six-month-old. Everything about him was small, except his head and bulging stomach. As the police left, they promised to return for him when they found his family.

Having never seen a white person, Daniel took a few minutes to warm up to Kathe. Very soon, though, he began calling her either “Mommy” or “Ambuya” (grandmother), and allowed her to bathe him, cleanse his sores and dress him for bed in soft, warm pajamas.

The next day, Daniel constantly asked for more food, even when he’d just eaten a large amount. (This is typical of a child who has not eaten well for months or years –their bodies have so much need, they don’t know how to “turn off” the desire to eat.) He also lay around most of the time; the combination of malnutrition, not knowing how to play, and never getting attention made him extremely passive.

After two weeks at Chishawasha, Daniel acted like a normal, active, intelligent two-year-old – constantly getting into everything, while talking almost non-stop in three languages (Bemba, Nyanja, and English). His favorite word, “n’cana” (I won’t) proved his two-year-old status.

With a doctor’s care, the sores (caused by a fly biting him and laying eggs under his skin; the larvae, then, eating his flesh and causing infection) were also drying up and disappearing. Daniel grew a full inch in those two weeks, two inches the first month!

The police never did learn anything about Daniel’s family. Nor did Daniel show signs of missing anyone. Now, five years later, he is a happy, healthy boy, continuing to grow and learn. At Chishawasha. Daniel has found a family. Here, he has numerous doting brothers and sisters and he calls all the men on the Chishawasha staff, “Daddy” and the women “Mommy”. Kathe continues to be his white “Ambuya”. (Close)

In Zambia, all students, who want to go to secondary (high) school, must pass a government exam.

Zambia Children’s Fund’s goal for the orphans in its care is: “To provide quality education (K-12) and trade skills to all; to help those who can acquire a higher education.” This year, the fruits of labor toward that goal were harvested.

In 2001, Chishawasha Children’s Home Zambia started an accelerated learning program for children over 11 years of age who lived at the orphanage and never had had an opportunity to go to school. Four years later, children in the accelerated class were doing 7th grade-level work and studying to pass the exam to qualify them for secondary school.

In November 2005, seven students, some who had only three or four years of school, passed the test. They not only passed, they excelled! The top three students of the hundreds taking the exam were Chishawasha orphans. Siyanga John Makunka placed first, Thokodzile Kauma (a girl) was second, and Siyanga Wisdom Mazuka was third. Because all seven students scored so well on the exam, they were admitted into 8th grade at SOS Children’s Village Secondary School, which is considered one of the best schools in Lusaka. Sharon, a Chishawasha 9th grader, was also admitted to the SOS school.

Very few Zambian children get even an elementary education, because children who go to school must pay tuition. This is virtually impossible for the millions of orphans and for their caregivers, many of whom are unemployed or work for meager wages.

Chishawasha’s too-long waiting list of Zambian orphans who need a place to live and learn continues to grow. (Close)

In January, after two years of having no place to live and moving from place to place, twelve-year-old Edith came to live at Chishawasha. Edith was so malnourished and eating such a rare event, for the first few weeks she had a tummy ache after every meal.

Edith had a two-year-old brother, Force, who lived with an aunt. The aunt had a number of small children, including a new baby. The staff at Chishawasha worried about how long a toddler as malnourished as Edith could survive.

They invited Force to come to live at Chishawasha. Edith was pulled out of class to greet Force when he arrived. He instantly transformed from a shy, scared little boy when he saw Edith, the one person who loved him. He yelled "Edith!" and ran beaming to his big sister where he jumped laughing into her arms and positively bounced up and down while being held by her. He spent the rest of the day being held by Edith including sitting on her lap while she was in class.

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In October, 2005, Kathe Padilla packed her lightweight clothes from Zambia and Tucson and embarked on her annual ZCF fundraising and speaking tour to the East Coast. For the third year, the members of First Baptist Church at DeWitt Park in Ithaca, New York hosted her and scheduled speaking engagements to help her spread the word about ZCF and the ways people could help. Undaunted by early bone-chilling autumn frosts and the threat of early snow, Kathe borrowed long underwear which she wore unobtrusively under her African dress as she spoke about the Zambian Children’s Fund. Her message was clear and compelling.

She spoke to groups at churches, the Alternative High School, and EcoVillage. Her week culminated with the keynote talk, at 11:30pm on a Friday night, to a regional Unitarian Youth Conference of over 100 high school students. At each venue, Kathe spoke from her heart about the needs of Zambia and its children orphaned by AIDS pandemic of southern Africa. With the aid of photos, she described how Chishawasha was being developed to provide homes, food, education and skills for some of these children.

People responded! At each venue people expressed their concern, caring and support. Ithacans began to gather their names, interests, and offers of expertise and contact information for later follow-up.

The ZCF Working Group-Ithaca was born. A small group gathered to share interest and offerings in some detail. The group adopted the following Goal Statement:
By working closely with ZCF staff, the Ithaca Working Group will provide financial, practical, technical and research support for the ZCF. It will also host ZCF-related people (e.g.,Kathe Padilla) when they are in the Ithaca area.
The Ithaca Working Group also agreed to meet about once a month with the bulk of the work to be accomplished by Task Forces with short, medium or long term goals. People would work on the specific Task Forces that interest them.

The first six months were a veritable whirlwind of enjoyable and satisfying activity which has included:

• “Send Sam Weeks to Zambia Project. ” Dr. Sam Weeks taught at Chishawasha during the 2006 school year. ;
• writing and submitting grant proposals for sanitary engineering and sustainable agriculture to the Engineers for a Sustainable World, headquartered at Cornell University;
• researching the usefulness, costs and availability of the Block Press made by Kickstart ;
• conducting a large clothing drive;
• researching the promise and problems of growing ostriches on site in Zambia;
• offering a speakers bureau to local audiences;
• revising and operating the ZCF website.

Chisawasha has the Glassco Foundation from Calgary, Canada to thank for it well and water system, which enabled construction of the first permanent house. In 2002, Colin Glassco, founder of the Glassco Foundation was intrigued by a small article about Kathe Padilla in Oprah. He contacted Kathe to ask if she needed a well. She, of course responded “yes” and then scrambled to find and purchase property on which the well could be dug. Within the year, the first permanent house was under construction on a 15-acre site about 8 kilometers north of Lusaka.

The Glassco Foundation had been working in Zambia since1997, when Colin Glassco met Dr. Boateng Wiafe, a Zambian eye surgeon who was doing surgery wherever he was able because he did not have a clinic. Mr. Glassco decided to build the Lusaka Eye Clinic for this “street surgeon.” Dr. Bo performs surgery on both adults and children, blinded due to trachoma and cataracts. Not only do adults have cataracts but children are sometimes also born with cataracts as a result of malnutrition.

After first distributing medicine to cure trachoma, Mr. Glassco then set out to solve the root cause of the problem, unclean water. He learned that much of the blindness that Dr. Bo was treating was due to the fact that the people were so poor that they did not have access to clean water. Mud holes were the water supply for not only villagers but also for all of their animals and all of the wild animals in the region. During the dry season, there frequently was no water at all for the villages. Appalled by this lack of basic clean water, Mr. Glassco realized that people would not get trachoma if they were simply able to wash their faces with clean water every day.

Thus began the Glassco Foundation’s project of drilling bore holes (wells) throughout southern Zambia, particularly in Gwembe Valley, one of the most impoverished regions of the country. New bore holes, fenced off so that animals can’t get close enough to pollute the water, dot the region. Each bore hole has a hand pump accessible to everyone in the village. The foundation also sent health educators to teach the basics of daily cleansing with clean water. In 2005, Glassco Foundation celebrated completion of its hundredth well drilled in Zambia, one of which is at Chishawasha.

When Kathe Padilla was able to travel with Mr. Glassco to visit a number of the sites where wells had been drilled, she reported that, for most of the villages, the clean water spawned nothing short of a miracle. There are now green garden plots completely surrounding the pump with everyone in the village able to grow their own vegetables and fruit trees. Best of all, villagers report a dramatic drop in the new cases of trachoma, or, in some villages, no new cases at all. The Glassco Foundation continues its mission to bring clean water to Zambia with 50 more bore holes slated to be drilled in 2006. For more information about the Glassco Foundation, click here ….(Close)

Two thousand and six (2006) marked a milestone year for Chishawasha because the construction of the first wing of the permanent primary school was undertaken. The construction was made possible by funding from the Glassco Foundation of Calgary, Canada.

One of the first steps before construction was to order a block press (see figure) from Project KickStart, a San Francisco-based organization that develops tools to help people overcome poverty in the Third World. The block press allowed the construction team to manufacture up to 300 blocks a day from a mixture of soil, water and as little as ten percent concrete. The block press cut down significantly on the amount of concrete used and saved up to half the cost of the concrete blocks.

The first wing of the school includes six classrooms. Four of the classrooms will initially be used as for a kindergarten class, a first grade class, a first/second grade accelerated class and a third/fourth grade accelerated class. CCHZ is committed to limiting class size to 20 students, so each student gets the individual attention they need.

One of the additional rooms will be used as a kitchen to prepare breakfast for the children who attend school but don’t live at Chishawasha and lunch for all the school children. Chishawasha children will eat breakfast at home but will join the other students for lunch at the school. All the school children will be provided with clothes and shoes, and medical care.

The sixth classroom will serve as a combination library and school office.

Excitement reigned as the school construction progressed and was completed.

(Gleaned from the ZCF February 2006 newsletter) (Close)

Peggy Njhlovu was one of the first children to come to the Chishawasha home in Lusaka in 2001. Unbeknownst to Kathe Padilla, she had come to check out the home before allowing her younger siblings to live in a house with a white women.

As the staff came to know Peggy, her family’s story unfolded. She told hem that the first person to die in her family was a new baby who died just before he was two years old. Once they realized how sick the child was, Peggy’s parents were tested and discovered that they both had HIV/AIDS. Peggy’s father died about a year later. Her mother never told the children how sick she was, Peggy and her siblings were completely surprised when she died in May of 2001.

Peggy, the oldest daughter, arrived at the Zambian Children’s Home still very depressed. She was determined to make sure that the home was well run and safe before she would allow her younger brothers and sisters to come live at the house. In September she began speaking about the other children in her family who needed help. In October, nine-year-old Stephen, came to live at the home. In January of the next year, 11-year-old Sharon moved in.

Peggy’s mother placed Charity, her youngest child in an orphanage just before she died. When, in 2002, all the children returned home for their oldest brother’s wedding, Charity, then age 7, convinced them that she shouldn’t have to return to the orphanage because she wanted to live with the rest of her family. Charity, too is living at Chishawasha and is enrolled in the Chishawasha school. Peggy, meanwhile, is skilled at sewing and hopes to take a course to become a seamstress.

(Gleaned from the ZCF September 2003 newsletter) (Close)

Bernard, or Ben as he is known, came to live at Chishawasha in January 2006. Although he was sixteen years old, he had never attended school. Orphaned at eight months, he had survived by moving from family to family. His gradmother had too many other orphaned grandchildren to raise so she was never able to keep Ben for more than a few months at a time. Ben never knew the luxury of eating regular meals because he was never lived with one family for a long time. For Ben, going to school to get an education was out of the question.

With that history, one might expect Ben to be an angry, uncooperative teenager. He is anything but that. He is helpful, hardworking and now that he has a home, he is a very happy young man. In fact, he is probably the best dancer and choreographer at Chishawasha.

When the staff at Chishawasha heard that Ben’s grandmother needed to find a place for one of Ben’s cousins Amos, they offered him a home. In August, the staff surprised Ben by bringing Amos to live at Chishawasha. Ben was working in the garden when the truck carying Amos pulled in. When he looked up and saw Amos in the truck, Ben ran from the garden and followed the truck to the house, where he literally lifted Amos out of the back of the truck and welcomed him to Chishawasha.

(Gleaned from the December 1, 2006 newsletter) (Close)