Where We Work

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is home to more than 895,000 out-of-school childrenUNICEF MICS 2022 and over 1.5 million orphaned or vulnerable learnersThe Herald. This is the place our founder calls home, and the first place we set out to change.

The reality children face

Poverty, child marriage, drought, and a strained health system keep children out of the classroom.

4.8M

children live in poverty, 1.6 million of them in extreme poverty.UNICEF

1 in 3

girls in Zimbabwe is married before her eighteenth birthday.UNICEF MICS 2019

3.5M

children were affected by the 2024 drought, the worst in forty years.UNICEF

~15%

of children go on to complete upper secondary school.Borgen Project

What stands in a child’s way

The threat facing girls

One in three girls marries before eighteen. In Mashonaland Central that figure reaches 52 percent, the highest of any province.UNICEF
Girls from the poorest households are roughly six times more likely to marry as children than girls from the wealthiest.Girls Not Brides
The Marriages Act of 2022 set eighteen as the legal minimum for every kind of marriage, but enforcement stays weak in rural and Apostolic communities.UNICEF
More than one in five adolescent girls is already married or in a union, and more than one in five gives birth as a teenager.UNICEF

A system stretched thin

Government education financing sits around 14 to 15 percent of the national budget, short of the 20 percent international benchmark.UNICEF ESA
The national fee-support program covers tuition and exam fees, but not the food, uniforms, or books a child also needs to stay in class.UNICEF ESA
Nearly three quarters of Zimbabwe's children experience food poverty.UNICEF 2025
The health system faces medicine shortages and a thinning workforce as international funding winds down through 2026.UNICEF

Our approach in Zimbabwe

We do not hand a child a textbook and call it opportunity, we fund the whole foundation a child stands on.

Sponsor the whole child

We invest directly in individual children, covering food, school fees, supplies, and healthcare together, not in isolation. A child cannot learn hungry, unwell, or turned away at the gate, so we fund the whole foundation at once. Investing since 2023, we begin where the need is greatest, from Matabeleland to Mashonaland Central, Manicaland, and Masvingo.The Herald

Open youth pathways

For older youth, we build on Project JEKA, a 2023 initiative that confronted youth substance abuse and unemployment in Zimbabwe’s high-density communities, pairing drug-abuse awareness campaigns with hands-on training in coding and entrepreneurship to replace idleness with real skills and a genuine path into stable work.

Build trusted partnerships

We do not work alone. We deliver through organizations already rooted in these communities, like Plan InternationalPlan International, our child sponsorship partner, and Pora HealthPora Health, a Zimbabwean nonprofit tackling health inequality and poverty that partnered with us on Project JEKA.

The kids we support in Zimbabwe

Sponsorship turns need into stability, dignity, and a place in the classroom. Princess is one of them.

Princess

Read her story

Proof it works

Every part of the model holds up in independent research, from sponsorship to school meals to healthcare.

Sponsored children who receive fee, food, and healthcare support together are significantly more likely to attend school regularly, sit in the correct grade for their age, and score higher on measures of cognition than children who receive fee support alone.Sherr et al. 2021
A six-country study of international child sponsorship found large gains in years of schooling and in secondary and tertiary completion, and sponsored children were more likely to hold salaried, better-paid jobs as adults.Wydick et al. 2013
School meals raise enrollment and attendance by close to ten percent and cut dropout, keeping vulnerable children, especially girls, in the classroom.World Food Programme
In a randomized trial in Kenya, treating children for intestinal worms cut school absenteeism by about a quarter, with higher earnings decades later.Evidence Action

Why this work matters now

The pressures on Zimbabwe’s children are compounding while the safety nets that once caught them thin. Waiting is not neutral.

The 2024 El Nino drought, the worst in forty years, put 1.8 million learners across 72 districts at risk of losing their education.ReliefWeb
Nearly three quarters of children experience food poverty, and in rural areas fewer than half have basic sanitation.UNICEF 2025
Inflation steadied in 2026, but an estimated 60 percent of people still live on less than 3.65 dollars a day.Borgen Project
International health funding is winding down, leaving more families without a safety net when a child falls ill.AP

Support our work for children in Zimbabwe

The need has never been more urgent. Your sponsorship funds food, school fees, supplies, and healthcare, the full foundation a child needs to stay in school.

Sponsor a child

Get Involved