AFSC - Zimbabwe
From the Newsroom: Statement on the Violence and the Political Standoff in Zimbabwe - June 26, 2008
AFSC launches the Livelihoods Program in Zimbabwe
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has begun a multi-year program in Zimbabwe to enhance the livelihoods of those living precariously in displaced communities. This initiative will support the most vulnerable – women, people with disabilities, adults with HIV/AIDS and those caring for orphan children – to offer training and start-up funds to gain economic self-sufficiency. Over the next few years, up to 800 families will join Savings and Loan groups, using revolving funds to begin home businesses. The AFSC is strengthening its presence and is currently seeking a Country Representative for Zimbabwe.
The AFSC has signed an operational agreement with the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise Development and will implement the program in partnership with two organizations; namely, the Silviera House (faith based local NGO), and the Zimbabwe Women’s Bureau. These organizations will provide training to identified community members in management skills, advocacy and mentoring for new business owners. The Livelihoods Program is part of AFSC’s work in Zimbabwe that includes programs for healing and conflict prevention.
“We bear the witness that Zimbabwe's current political stalemate and economic hardships are worsening by each day. The hyperinflation combined with undeclared economic sanctions, have badly hit the poorest” says AFSC’s Regional Director, Dereje Wordofa. He adds, “We have committed to support poor communities at this difficult time, and know this is far from adequate given the needs are too high. All stakeholders must therefore search for a nourished political approach, use rigorous diplomacy at various levels with new vision to end the current upheavals.”
AFSC’s testimony is that all parties must commit to non-violence in resolving matters of conflict. We have faith that each individual, family, community, party and government entity will fuel the process of peace and justice.
In Zimbabwe: Working in Contradictions
by Hollyn Green
July 7, 2007
I experience Zimbabwe as a country of contradiction. Moving around the countryside, there are wonderful surprises... Faces of pride, fatigue, steely confidence and exhausted despair tell a complex story. One story is of a country of agricultural abundance; a country where the expansion of education was unprecedented in sub-Sahara Africa achieving the highest literacy rate on the continent at 90%; a country that brought quality medical care to the rural poor and reversed discriminatory laws of colonial rule - elevating the status of women to be equal with men and outlawing biased workplace laws. 
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