Zimbabwe Community Development Association

The funding will be used to support my Initiatives, over the last decade, to contribute towards the solution to the perennial problem of unacceptably high maternal deaths and, harmful sexual reproductive health practices still very prevalent among young women and youths in developing countries, particularly Zimbabwe. The initiative aims to facilitate Indigenous Assimilation of Reproductive Health Science Education in order to promote the Uptake of Conventional Sexual Reproductive Health services among pregnant mothers and youths in Rural Zimbabwe.

 The thrust of this innovative intervention hinges on the vernacularization of Sexual Reproductive Health Science Education to make it easy to grasp and user-friendly.  Sexual Reproductive Health Science Education in Zimbabwe and other Anglophone countries is conventionally delivered in a foreign language (English) and shrouded in medical jargon making it very difficult to understand for the semi-literate or moderately schooled mothers and young women.

The funds will be used to:

1.Develop a reproductive Health Science teaching module in the vernacular (Shona) language for use in Training in Community Health Caregivers.

2. Conduct Training of the Trainer (ToT) on Reproductive health Science in the indigenous language.

3. Provide Education for the Eradication of Reproductive Health Education Myths among conservative religious leaders.

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Camilious Machingura is the Team leader for the Zimbabwe Community Development Association (ZCDA). Camilious is an all-around development practitioner whose interest is in the protection and transformation of vulnerable communities for the betterment of their lives. The Team Leader is a multi-skilled professional with Nursing, Counselling, and Leadership qualifications at tertiary level. He has been in development work for 13 years now, and at the helm of ZCDA for 5 years. Camilious has been working to transform disadvantaged communities, particularly in the area of health and protection.

Vision: 

Camilious' vision is to become an accomplished all-around development practitioner and Advisor competent enough to transform vulnerable community groups and/or to capacitate them to find durable solutions to their challenges.

ZCDA is a non-profit national organization registered as a  PVO.  ZCDA’s purpose and overall objective are to facilitate and organize disadvantaged and vulnerable communities to participate in developmental issues to improve their lives. The organization’s main thrust is to protect, negotiate and advocate for the special populations and disadvantaged communities to access and utilize basic social services.

 Future Goals

To capacitate vulnerable communities across the world find home-grown  solutions to their problems particularly in the fight against ignorance on disease prevention

This intervention seeks to Eradicate Maternal Deaths and myths surrounding Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) among expectant mothers and young women in Zimbabwe. It's sad that in this age of advanced medical science a significant number of expectant mothers continue to die due preventable obstetric complications and that some girls and young women continue to be victims of harmful sexual reproductive practices. In Zimbabwe, 462 mothers died per every 100,000 live births in 2019. The figure can be up for 2020. Africa and South Asia contribute 86% of global maternal deaths, and Sub-Sahara Africa records about 200,000 maternal deaths per year. According to UNICEF, at least 200 million women have experienced Genital Mutilation in 31 countries particularly Africa, Middle East, and Asia. 

 Maternal deaths and Female Genital Mutilation are largely caused by retrogressive cultural and religious beliefs, perpetuated by lack of literacy on basic SRH Science. In Zimbabwe, 38% of women are members of apostolic sects a majority of which have low literacy levels and, are against utilizing conventional Reproductive Health Services.

ZCDA supports vulnerable communities with developmental and Health Education. It is working with religious and traditional leaders to promote women and girls uptake of conventional Reproductive Health Services  

ZCDA came to realize that religious and rural women can not make informed SRH choices because they are ignorant of basic SRH anatomy and physiology and causes of disease which results in harmful sexual health practices and maternal deaths. 

The new approach to solve this is to develop SRH Science education modules for training community SRH promoters and religious leaders in vernacular as a new medium of teaching, to make the subject easy to grasp, so it can transform the beneficiaries' minds set. This entails coming up with explicit indigenous terms to demystify the foreign SRH science jargon which over the years, proved very difficult to grasp by semi-literate rural women. This promotes Indigenous Assimilation of SRH science education by vulnerable local women which can thaw their resistance to utilize conventional SRH services.

This approach is unique in Zimbabwe, Africa Sub-Sahara and other developing countries in that never before has there ever been attempts to teach SRH science and health science in general, in local languages. The normative approach has been to teach SRH in foreign languages, which has proved to be a challenge in promoting the uptake of SRH services to a significant population of rural and religious women.

For rural women to shed off myths and retrogressive beliefs, and utilize conventional SRH services to reduce maternal deaths and eradicate harmful SRH practices, training on transformative scientific knowledge on SRH, imparted to them in the indigenous language is needed. To this end;

 1. a vernacular SRH training module shall first be developed. A wide consultation from all the five Shona dialects, indigenous obstetricians, department of Health education, and indigenous languages specialists shall be done.

2. The Shona SRH training Module shall be reviewed by a panel of Health Education experts and then for approval by the Ministry of Health. 

3. The Module shall be used for pilot Community Health Promoters training in one district of Manicaland and an evaluation of its effectiveness done to improve it.

4. The module shall be used for training Community Health promoters and religious leaders in other districts in Manicaland.

The teaching of a taboo subject like sex will have a better impact if it's done in the local language as it promotes indigenous assimilation of the knowledge by the conservative religious women. Assimilated knowledge has a greater transformative impact. It has greater potential to change women's attitudes and perception of SRH services