The Baptist Union of Wales staff sat down recently with an amazing team of people in Zimbabwe, who are facing hardship and a ‘national disaster’, but are also seeing signs of hope as a result of their work in Zimbabwe.
‘We keep our faith,’ said Grace Mugebe who works for Christian Aid Zimbabwe, while discussing the attitude of the team that is on the frontline of many humanitarian and environmental struggles. ‘There is very little hope in Zimbabwe… but we believe that the Lord will set things right.’
In April this year, the President of Zimbabwe announced a ‘national disaster’ in the country. This was as a result of a drought that was driven by the El Nino climate oscillation, a climatic phenomena that takes place every few years and has a large effect on the world’s climate. The effects of El Nino may also be heightened by the increasing temperatures driven by Climate Change.
The current drought has affected at least 27 million people in the Southern Africa region, and Malawi, Lesotho, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe have all declared similar national emergencies as populations have seen water and food shortages increase.
The Christian Aid team were already working with smallholder farmers who are most at risk of the impacts of climatic changes in the region, by increasing resilience in their farming methods, as well as opening up new avenues of income that would not be fully dependent on harvests. The BUW were also already supporting this work before the current drought through our ‘Talents of Hope’ appeal.
This existing work has proven to be critical amidst the development of this current drought. According to Grace Mugebe, a recent visit to the Mudzi district where they have been operating proved that the work they have been doing has been largely successful, with many farmers proven to be resilient in their methods, even during this drought.
‘We were in Mudzi recently and it was very encouraging to see communities resilient and adapting to this El Nino induced drought,’ Grace told us. ‘The communities had implemented the climate-smart agriculture techniques they had learned through the BRACT programme, and they are already preparing to bounce back from this drought!’.
Christian Aid are also responding directly to this drought by training communities in water conservation techniques, increasing access to clean water, and continuing to develop climate smart agriculture techniques that increase their resilience as farmers.
They have also been doing critical work responding to gender-based violence in local communities, in addition to responses to other crises such as a current cholera outbreak which is made worse by the ongoing drought.
BUW will continue to support the work of Christian Aid, and stand with communities in Zimbabwe as we look to the final months of our appeal (which will run until December this year).
You can hear more about what is happening in Zimbabwe, and the work of Christian Aid in a new video series that was produced over the past few months in a series of conversations with the Christian Aid Zimbabwe team.
There are many ways to support the critical work happening in Zimbabwe. In March 2024, a challenge was launched for the Baptist family to walk 750+ miles, which amounts to the length of Wales and Zimbabwe together. So far, 388.85 miles have already been walked,while others have been fundraising for the appeal in different ways.
The WALK! Wales Zimbabwe challenge will continue until the end of October, and you can register for the challenge on our website here. There are also resources for services, instructions on how to give and fundraise, materials for younger groups, and more on the Talents of Hope pages here.