📋 Tender Overview
Today, the handover ceremony of newly furnished classrooms and a solar-powered borehole for children in need was held in Goromonzi, Harare. The Ambassador of Japan to Zimbabwe, H.E. Mr Shinichi Yamanaka, attended the handover ceremony. The project was funded through the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Humanitarian Projects Assistance (GGP) scheme with the amount of US$ 91,695 and was completed by Kufunda Village Trust, a local NGO.
Goromonzi is a rural community in Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. Due to the limited number of schools in the district, the closest governmental school from the area was 12 km away, and some children could not have consistent access to education. Receiving multiple requests from the community, Kufunda Village Trust founded the Kufunda Primary School in 2015. Although the school has been popular with its unique curriculum since its foundation, it did not have enough capacity to accept all the children in the catchment area due to the limited number of classroom blocks. With only three blocks, children from different grades had to share a block with a thin partition, which was a constant destruction as they were forced to hear two different subjects simultaneously. The school also had an erratic water supply.
This project has greatly improved the educational environment for children at Kufunda Primary School. The children and teachers now have two additional, newly designed classroom blocks with locally produced desks and chairs. In addition, the new solar-powered borehole provides an uninterrupted supply of clean water for drinking, as well as for the school’s distinctive art classes such as farming or painting.
As a result of the improvements at Kufunda, it is hoped that the children will be able to profit more from their school years and bring out their unique talents and potential. Furthermore, the school has just launched a pilot boarding school, and enrolment is expected to increase by 100 children, eventually reaching up to 240 learners (all primary school students).
Speaking at the handover ceremony, Ambassador Yamanaka commended Kufunda Village Trust for successfully completing the project and expressed his excitement over the development of a unique school curriculum and the empowerment of each child with the new classroom blocks and water supply. He urged the organisation and the community members “to continue working together so that Kufunda Primary School children will have quality education”.
Over the years, communities around Zimbabwe have benefitted from the support provided by the Government of Japan under the GGP scheme. It provides support to improve social and economic conditions at the local level, in the fields of education, health, food and nutrition security, WASH, and support for vulnerable groups. It was launched in Zimbabwe in 1989, and 156 projects have been implemented so far throughout the country, with total funding of over US$ 15.7 million.
