Rain Season – A period of hope and renewal

Right now the rain season in Zambia starts. It is the time of the year every farmer is waiting for. Lloyd calls it a period of hope and renewal…very true: planting season is knocking on our doors.

We are still busy preparing for that. There is so much to do. So many different things. Right now Lloyd is going around to get polythene bags in Choma and seeds and pesticides in Livingstone. And he is doing that after and between working his main job as a teacher. 😉

PAF volunteers packing soil into polythene bags for seedlings

 

While Lloyd is enjoying city life for a bit our volunteers in Chinkonono Village work hard on our objective to raise as many tree seedlings as possible to provide the less fortunate with trees and help feed their families and change their diets, but also to fulfill the “Moringa tree” deal we made with the Chief.

passing on the gift of life

 

Shy girl 😉

 

That means we have to ferry black soil and river sand from the river back to our grounds. Then we have to mix it in the correct proportions to create a rich soil for the seedlings.

So grateful for our animals..special volunteers

 

If you think this job is rough when it is warm and dry you should try it after some heavy rains 😉

A typical day for a Planting A Future volunteer

 

Horse Power? Hard work 😉

 

As you can imagine our volunteers get hungry after a hard day…so what do we serve today? Right…some nice and nutricious dish.

Makande Zambian style…a maize and bean stew…very yummy and gives us strength to keep on working hard

 

Other than that we are still clearing out our plot for the sewing room and library. The ladies finally agreed on the side where it will be built and it is now settled.

PAF executive meeting with Grime chairing

 

The construction has just begun now and we will keep you updated about the progress.  This will definitely be one of the highlights for 2016.

We also found a professional tailer who will be teaching our volunteers how to sew three times a week. That way we can offer some training for our women.

If anyone can help us out with some sewing patterns for clothes and/or instructions on how to use them or maybe books about sewing…please contact us via e-mail on plantingafuture@gmail.com

New contact e-mail

Do you have any questions, suggestions or feedback? Feel free to contact us. We just opened a new e-mail account:

plantingafuture@gmail.com

Theatersport Berlin supports PAF

We are happy to announce that we have a new supporter on board. This time it is a big fish: Theatersport Berlin.

Theatersport Berlin now features us 🙂

 

They are one of the most famous and popular improv theatre companies in Germany. For more than 20 years those guys perform their shows every week in Berlin and at various improv festivals all over the world.

You wonder how Planting A Future and an improv theatre company come to partner? Well…maybe you should know that improv theatre means that the actors do not rehearse. They just jump on stage and ask the audience for suggestions like places, genres, music styles, authors, centuries, relationships between people, jobs…and then it goes 5-4-3-2-1-GO! And a scene starts. They just make up everything that happens on stage. Their motto is “We don’t know what we play, we only know that we will play”.

Makes a lot of sense if you connect that to Planting A Future, right? We improvise a lot too. We do have ideas and plans, but we don’t always know how to get there. So we just take what life throws at us and make the best of it. At the end of the day we do achieve what we aimed at.

How we got in touch with Theatersport Berlin? Well…Julie made that possible. She is a big fan and has been at their shows for years now. Obviously she made friends with the actors at some point and now helps out a bit at the shows and takes the photos for their Facebook page. Her love for Africa and Zambia are well known there and when she told them about Planting A Future they straight away agreed to support us. 🙂

Right now we are still talking about how Theatersport can support and help us. We have some nice ideas which are still in the making. So keep posted. For now we are being featured on their website.

Thank you so much, guys! DANKE!

 

Please give them a “thumbs up” on Facebook: Theatersport Berlin

 

PAF women thank our donors for the sewing machines…and sing and dance

As you guys might have noticed…in the past days we recieved a generous donation from Repairer of the Breach Inc. to buy 2 sewing machines.

This morning Lloyd sent a video he took at Chinkonono Village. It shows our PAF ladies dancing and singing full of joy.

They are so happy and sing about all the development this generous act will bring and that it will help end poverty. They thank our donors.

Also those smart ladies took their chance and have been smuggling in all their fabrics and first tailoring attempts 😉 Sneaky. But our PAF collection will be en vogue soon 😉 We can’t wait to see more.

Tailoring our Future…with some help from Jamaica

Big things keep happening for Planting A Future these days. First we recieved 400 € from our friends in Germany to buy building materials for the 2 planned new buildings: a sewing room with veranda and a small library.

Now we are happy to announce a new cooperation with another non-profit organisation from Jamaica, Repairer Of The Breach Inc. 🙂 Please check out their Facebook Page and support them as much as you support us!

Our new partners from Jamaica: Repairer Of The Breach Inc.

They transferred another $US 260 so we could finally buy 2 sewing machines for the PAF women in our village and community.

Our ladies can’t really believe that this is real 😉

As you can imagine the ladies have been delighted. Happy faces all over the place. They were checking on the sewing machines straight away. The ones knowing how they work started teaching the others. Zambian Sewing 101 😉

First sewing “lessons” started straight away

Our women suddenly went off, just to come back with all sorts of fabrics and chitenge that they could find and test the machines. Believe me…no fabric will escape their swift fingers and the needles now.

Now no fabric has a chance to escape our ladies’ hands and the needle 😉

No we can ensure that they learn how to tailor and sew clothes for their families and for sale. They will keep the biggest part of their benefit to feed their families, but also give back a little amout to PAF. That way we can make sure to keep our costs covered and invest in other things again.

Next step now is to finish the construction of the 2 new buildings, which we plan to be done with in spring 2016. Keep your fingers crossed. We are on it!

Big thanks again to Repairer Of The Breach Inc. for the generous donation. Special thanks go to our dear friend and supporter Carol Williams who always supported us right from the start! All this will change a lot of people’s lives!

Big Things Lay Ahead Of Us…

As we all know our project’s main objective is to improve food security in our village and surrounding areas through raising, distributing and providing fruit trees and relevant skills.  

We are also not blind to other areas such as education, health, economy and water needs of our people…hence our holistic approach to problem solving and mitigation.

Fetching water…not easy when there is not much left

Preparing for the way back home with the buckets

Could you handle that?

The planting season is on us and our aim is to raise as many tree seedlings as we can for the season 2016 and 2017.

We are preparing for the 2016 planting season

Watering seedlings at the nursery

Our target is to raise:

• 10.000 moringa trees for farmers (if you remember Chief Nyawa already ordered quite a few and we want to be prepared)
• 500 guava trees
• 200 mango trees
• 400 papayas
• 200 oranges
• 100 lemons and Natches

Away from trees we are going to build a sewingroom and community library.
The sewing room is meant for people in the village who area already doing tailoring. That way we can provide a location for women especially to sew and tailor for their families and also for selling clothes on the market. We have recieved 400 Euros from our german volunteers to purchase basic building materials.

Our cement

Also our partner organisation ROTB donated 260 US dollars to purchase second hand sewing machines. Those will be traditional sewing machines that work without power because that is a whole different chapter in Zambia 😉

We are also building a library for village kids and general population. It will provide kids with books to help them learn better and of course some story books to help develop creativity and fantasy. The library will also have books for adults about topics such as farming, tailoring, general knowledge and news…probably some good novels too. This way we also aim to help adults learn how to read and improve their english skills. Thanks to our generous friend Murray from Australia in a few months we will have the first load of books. He asked local schools and his friends to donate books…huge success. 🙂

Murray sent the first huge box on its way 🙂

And of course we are still working hard on our community veggie garden.

Checking and classifying seeds

You see…big plans for the next few months 😉 There is alot to do still and all likers of our page, sympathisers, wellwishers, donors, friends and even critics are welcome to give suggestions on how we can help the community better. Also if you want to support us with donations of any kind…we are grateful and humbled.

A taste of Hawaii…PAF women tasting dried banana sent to them by Patrick Thompson. Yummy 🙂

Thanks everyone.
It is love without borders indeed.