Local Leaders: Spiwe from Chiedza, Zimbabwe

Spiwe Chakawa is the Executive Director at Egmont Partner Chiedza in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she leads the team in its mission to provide second chance education to vulnerable children and orphans who have dropped out of mainstream school. In 2019, Spiwe and her team won Egmont's Best Performing Organisation award.

Briefly, what is Chiedza’s mission?

Chiedza aims to improve the quality of life for orphans, vulnerable children, young people, and their families. This is achieved through an integrated program approach facilitating access to education, protection, health, nutrition and economic strengthening services in Zvimba rural and Harare South districts.

What motivated you to join Chiedza?

I had worked for a similar organisation for 9 years, but my role was mainly in advocacy working with policy makers. It was daunting to realise that it will take years before meaningful change can happen at policy level that will directly bring about positive change in the lives of children and young people.

Chiedza offered me an opportunity to work directly with children and young people and witness the changes that I was wishing for all the years. At Chiedza, every child or young person that I interact with is a story of change and that is motivating!

How has Egmont's support since 2015 changed Chiedza's approach and impact?

Egmont's support to Chiedza was strategic in that it allowed us to test ideas. We used it to strengthen our education programme for out of school children, developing it into a more defined programme.

The support from Egmont has also helped us to improve our approach and model of delivering the education programme. We used to release the children out of the programme soon after completing O' level because we felt completion was enough. We later realised that it was not impactful, and with Egmont funding, we tested our idea of adding a vocational training component, which we did successfully and are planning to scale up. Our education programme used to be supported by volunteer teachers which threatened the sustainability of the program but with sustained support from Egmont, the programme is now fully supported by full time education facilitators.

The continued support from Egmont gave other funders confidence and they supported the programme with infrastructure. We had three classrooms in 2015, and now we have six classrooms and a new toilet block. That improved our reach from an average of 140 learners per year to 240. With that scale, Chiedza’s education programme was officially recognised by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and in 2023, we became registered as a community school and an examination centre.

Thanks to Egmont’s support, we have become the only organisation known for providing a holistic education programme in our community. The model of support from Egmont which is multi-year and puts the implementers at the centre of developing programme ideas and lead in implementation has ensured sustainability and sustained impact for Chiedza.

What achievements are you most proud of?

That young people who have completed vocational training and are now employed and that we have sustained our education programme for out of school children for over 10 years and that the programme has evolved from a project into a registered community school.

More broadly, I am really proud of Chiedza’s holistic model: we do not work with children in isolation, but we involve the parents of these children. Currently the caregivers are engaged in positive parenting sessions and income generating activities.

I am also proud of our end-to-end approach to our programmes – when we enrol a child, we do not leave them halfway, but we support them until they are able to join the community as responsible young adults.

We understand that poverty is multifaceted therefore we layer all the services required for each child depending on need. For example, the children who are supported in our education program receive counselling, sexual reproductive health rights information, hot meals, access to birth registration and health services.

What are your hopes for the future?

I want to see Chiedza with a bigger one stop community school in a rural area supporting children from the hard-to-reach communities. This one stop community school will have educational programs for children from primary to secondary and a vocational centre.

I also envision Chiedza being able to replicate this model with other community-based organisations to reach more children. I hope to see children and young people in our programs reaching their full potential, having their families, employed or running their own businesses and able to provide for themselves, their families and the economy of Zimbabwe.