Chronicle Editor
Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
A trust in Binga has initiated a programme of donating stationery targeting vulnerable pupils in school amid reports that some children are missing lessons because they cannot afford to buy books.
Binga Giving Hope Foundation is a registered non-profit organisation founded by Mr Dumisani Mudimba last year to support and empower vulnerable children especially those with disabilities and orphans in Binga District.
The Foundation has been actively involved in the fight against Covid-19 through various initiatives including donating masks and sanitisers to schoolchildren.
The Trust last Friday donated exercise books, pens and pencils to Donga Primary in Kani ward near Binga Centre.
The school is an annex of Binga Primary and has close to 200 pupils.
About 50 vulnerable children were identified and each got a case of exercise books, pen and pencil.
Shortage of social services infrastructure like schools and clinics and poor roads are some of the challenges faced by Binga communities, and expectations are high that the desire by the Second Republic to leave no one behind will usher development.
Mr Mudimba said his organisation carried out a random assessment around schools and established that a majority of pupils are vulnerable as their parents are failing to buy books for them because of the effects of Covid-19 among other challenges.
“We have made a random assessment and about 90 percent of learners are in desperate need of help because parents are not working and many of them are vulnerable.
“We want to promote programmes on education, healthcare, recreational skills, social services and moral support for these children to realise their full potential.
“We want to bring disadvantaged children out of suffering, poverty, helpless and hopeless situations and grant them educational opportunities to enable them attain a better life in the future in line with Government aspirations for an upper middle income society by 2030 and also President Mnangagwa’s policy of leaving no one behind,” said Mr Mudimba.
At Donga Primary School, Mr Mudimba said, they were told by school authorities that 22 vulnerable children were absent because they had no stationery.
He said school authorities were excited to receive the exercise books, pencils and pens on behalf of the pupils.
Binga Giving Hope Foundation works in partnership with Government through various agencies and departments.
Mr Mudimba said the Trust has been mobilising the resources through the help of well-wishers.
“We are looking for partners but we can’t be sitting and watching our children not going to school because we don’t have donors,” he said. — @ncubeleon
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