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At the beginning of November, Michael Hoppe travelled to our new project country Zimbabwe. During the trip, which lasted several days, he visited communities around the Mutasa and Mutare regions. Together with our partner Foundation Help with a plan we started our collaboration there for the next three years at the beginning of August 2017. The aim of the projects is to promote early childhood development, create income and food security for families and improve child health. Four ECCD (Early Childhood Care and Development) centres are being set up in the two municipalities. There, children between the ages of three and six will receive the early childhood education that is so important for them.

45,000 bricks for one of these centres have already been fired by the inhabitants of the village of Chigombwe near Mutare in self-built kilns - as Mushanty, the person responsible for the village community, proudly presented to us.

This also inspired steps founder Michael Hoppe, who was positively impressed by people's commitment and willingness to take action. In dialogue with the project partner and the members of the communities, he shared his 12 years of experience from the steps projects in Namibia. As a former entrepreneur, he is pursuing the goal of one day making the social projects independent of donations. This means creating opportunities for people to generate their own income and thus finance the social projects. Together with the members of the communities, he discussed what these income-generating measures could look like and how they are already being implemented, using the specific example of the fish pond, among others.

With the new partner project, our two organisations are transferring expertise that will benefit the people of Zimbabwe. We are thus making an important contribution to the empowerment of 1,500 children and families in the country.

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