First Lady launches skills development programme in Mbare
Initiative targets children living on streets, community, drug addicts
FIRST LADY Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa has launched a massive skills development project in Mbare, Harare, for children living on the streets and drug abusers, as she continues with her empowerment drive and battle against drug abuse, prostitution and indiscipline among youths.
Dr Mnangagwa showed her unconditional love for them when she provided toiletries and buckets for them to bath.
She also provided them with food. Working with the Harare City Council, the First Lady revamped the Mbare Netball Complex and set up a nutritional garden and orchard with drip irrigation, a solar-powered borehole with 20 000-litre tanks and taps.
She also built a cooking shade, a sink area and put in place a washing line.
The mother of the nation further renovated bathrooms and toilets that will be used by the children as they will be doing various projects.
Showing the way to the children, Amai Mnangagwa planted various types of vegetables and fruit trees with them under the project, which will be implemented in all the country’s 10 provinces.
The complex becomes the skills development centre for Harare Metropolitan province, where children from the streets and around the community will receive training in various projects, including agriculture, carpentry, dressmaking, cooking and sporting activities.
The support programme will afford the children with an opportunity to stay off the streets, off drugs and embark on a new path, as they will also receive medical services.
This is not the first time the First Lady has launched a project directly for children living on the streets and drug addicts, after she rounded up some a few years ago and committed them to Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa Children’s Home in Chiredzi, where they are pursuing academic studies and being equipped with vocational training skills.
Beneficiaries of the programme have quit drugs and become masters of their own destiny through empowerment projects like piggery, goat rearing, horticulture and carpentry, to name a few.
The home was changed from Chambuta Children’s Home to Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa Children’s Home in honour of the First Lady, who to this day continues mobilising resources for its sustenance and initiating countless projects there.
Amai Mnangagwa has also, for a long time, been working with children living on the streets in her fight against drug abuse through sport.
Addressing the gathering in Mbare, Dr Mnangagwa highlighted that her motherly instinct compelled her to address the plight of street children, who are often exposed to drug addiction and child sexual exploitation.
“Today, I have come to launch a programme focusing on these children so that they leave drugs and stay off the streets. This place (netball complex) had been turned into a dumping site, but I have given it a facelift, in conjunction with the Harare City Council. We agreed to work closely together,” she said.
“This programme focuses on rehabilitating those who are misbehaving in this programme called ‘First Lady’s Life Skills Development Project for Persons Living on the Streets and Drug Abusers’. There shall be an array of skills. I wish to thank all those who worked with me, those who assisted me and those who will continue to assist me. Thank you! A mother builds, moulds, and that is why I have come to mould those who are digressing from our expected norms. An elephant will never shirk responsibility. Come back and suckle vanangu, because there is no mother on the streets. Accept to be assisted.”
◆ Read more on: www.sundaymail.co.zw