New Hope Foundation Zimbabwe
​
5 out 0f 10 people in Zimbabwe might know a verse or two in the bible or the Koran but little about the constitution of the republic, this make people of Zimbabwe vulnerable as the same people might end up taking advantage of their little knowledge on the constitution to violet their rights, some might choose to amend the constitution to their own advantage depriving millions of people their freedom of association and assembly as well as a right to be heard
To help us achieve our goals, we have added the following 4 sub-projects to our rights advocacy and lobbying activities: (1) Youth and Women's empowerment, (2) Community development, (3) GBV Awareness and (4) Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights awareness.
​
Furthermore, to achieve our goals, in 2011, we started producing child-friendly constitutional & rights colouring books that are now hosted by the Save the Children Online resources and 1 of them is now earmarked for use in the European Block .
All our activities are implemented through Community Arts and culture Initiatives mainstreaming, communicable and non-communicable diseases,
gender and disability. Our Zimbabwean target is to reach out directly to 1,5 million children and 5 million indirectly by year 2025​
OUR SOCIAL ACTIONS
Human Rights and Constitutional Litracy
CHILD HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY
NHF-Zimbabwe's main activity is to work on promoting Child human rights, a subset of human rights, with particular attention to the rights and special protection and care afforded to minors.
​
The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which has now been ratified by almost every Government around the world, defines a child as "any human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, the majority is attained earlier.
Children's rights include their right to association with both parents, human identity, and the basic needs for physical protection, food, universal state-paid education, health care, and criminal laws appropriate for the age and development of the child, equal protection of the child's civil rights.
NHF-Zimbabwe has done a lot of work in this area including carrying out Global Campaigns that are now on Wikipedia development and publication of Child Friendly Constitutional and Rights coloring books for ages 3 to 17 years.
GBV & SRHR & child human rights
To further promote child rights and protect children from violence in the home NHF-Zimbabwe works on gender-based violence (GBV) awareness and SRHR activities, when violence is reduced in the home, workplace and community, children are safe. Our activities make people aware of violent behaviours such as physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, threats, coercion, and economic or educational deprivation of rights on all children but with special focus on the girl child's rights.
​
Getting involved in sexual and reproductive health and rights activities was a must-do for us as we support young people taking a look at these four fields:
Our actions target groups of young people who are working with us in the community and in our Child Rights advocacy work. In the concept of SRHR, these four fields are treated as separate but inherently intertwined
YOUTHS & WOMEN EMPOWERMENT & Child Human Rights
To create social safety nets (SSN) for children , NHF-Zimbabwe works with youth and women, not as passive participants, but actively involving them in social and economic empowerment activities, they are the custodians of our movement and lead in Child Human Rights defence, our activities with them aim to contribute towards the reduction of unemployment among the youth and women through the creation of employment opportunities in a number of areas.
Our Empowerment projects are defined in five separate categories: social, economic, educational, political, and psychological.
​
We care about women’s empowerment and creating social impact. We looked at what we have in our area – human resources, crafts, raw materials – and we set out to help the most marginalized in the community.
​
Furthermore, we have decided to support women and youth led initiatives as they are the same people who live with children whose rights we work on promoting and protecting, most of these youths work with us as volunteers on our projects
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT & Child Human Rights
New Hope Foundation Zimbabwe believes that Community development is important when working on promoting and protecting the rights of the child, we use it to strategically bring people together to work on ways to take action on challenges they face and what's important to them. Our community development actions are rooted in the belief that all people should have access to health, wellbeing, wealth, justice and opportunity.
​
NHF-Zimbabwe's Community development key purpose is to build communities based on justice, equality and mutual respect. This involves changing the relationships between ordinary people and people in positions of power, so that everyone can take part in the issues that affect their lives all for the benefit of the child.
​
In our work, children are acknowledged as being able to identify genuine risks when identifying when they feel safe and unsafe (eg Wright 2004). However, at the same time it has been identified that children can be reluctant to tell others about their concerns because they feel they will not be listened to, understood, taken seriously or believed (Featherstone and Evans 2004
​
Elfas Mcloud Shangwa at a child rights holiday camp in Mahusekwa, Zimbabwe in 2011
NHF-Zimbabwe Community Development benchmarks
NHF-Z's community development processes are open-ended and can lead to many outcomes:
-
individuals developing self-esteem and confidence
-
people participating in social activities to overcome social isolation
-
increased participation in political and citizenship activities
-
practical outcomes such as a changed bus route or a new pedestrian crossing
-
government funding for new or additional services.
​​
Ultimately, this will lead to improved family well-being and child safety.
The theoretical underpinnings our model are found in research suggesting that engaging local residents (Wright, 2004), increasing social support for caregivers (Barbarin, 2002;Ceballo & McLoyd, 2002), and improving perceived neighborhood cohesion (Silk, Sessa, Morris, Steinberg, & Avenevoli, 2004) and neighborhood social capital (Korbin, Coulton, Chard, Platt-Houston, & Su, 1998;Zolotor & Runyan, 2006) improves children's safety of the Child.