Every Challenge Contains Seeds of Opportunity

Nyika Muyambo, Mentor, Sisonke Trust, Monde, outside Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

When we evaluated everything at the end 2020, we saw it as the year we achieved more than any year in the past.

When the pandemic started drawing closer to our neighbor, South Africa, we thought no, it’s not coming. But when much came in, borders were shut down, and it became the lockdown of the entire world. It was terrifying to me personally and to our work as an organization. Victoria Falls is a tourism town, where if there are no travelers, the economy is automatically crippled. Beyond COVID, other challenges emerged. As an organization, we said what shall we do in the midst of all these challenges? It brought terrifying fear to us. But we decided to look at the other side of the coin. They say every challenge contains the seeds of opportunity. So looking at that, we tried to sort out what opportunities we had for us to be able to survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lyq3h6CBfs

We looked at the challenges our community was facing, and the most thing that was crying out was the issue of hunger. Many organizations started providing food. We thought if we provide food now, we will not have more funds to do it monthly. So we decided to grow food. We planted a garden, and this garden provided food to the boys and their families. And it provided an opportunity to continue to work with the boys.

The other thing was people were not informed about what COVID was, there were a lot of myths. So we decided to partner with the Victoria Falls Task Force. When we joined, we started getting reliable information, and we disseminated it to the boys, and the boys took it to their families. When it reached the families, they knew what COVID-19 is. We started coming up and being visible in the community, our village, working with the task force, which was the front line in combating the spread of COVID-19.

Also we realized another opportunity — children were not going to school, so we decided to offer classes. We spoke to Talent, who is now one of our mentors, and she started teaching because she has a very good background in education. She started teaching the boys and community members starting bringing in their girls, saying they also need to benefit from the classes. So we opened our arms and allowed girls. When we did that, we realized the community started coming in to get involved with Sisonke as an organization. We emerged as community leaders and as people who wanted to bring solutions to the challenges the community was facing. Not only that, we decided to (get involved) in every community act combating the spread of COVID. We were visible. We saw an opportunity where we could help.

Our garden came to the extent of helping the Victoria Falls Task Force. We donated some of the vegetables to them for them to be able to feed kids. That gave us a strong grip to be part of the problem solvers. We realized that we achieved the most important part of program implementation, which is community buy-in. When the community saw us respond as problem solvers, they decided to partner with us willingly, which is usually not very easy when an organization brings a program in. By us joining hands with those actually combating the challenges, the community trusted us and decided to start working with us. Members of the community, parents and guidance (counselors), started knocking at our doors, asking more about what Sisonke Boys Club was.

That’s when parents requested we start a girls club. We had parents coming to register their children. We did not go out to look for the kids, they started coming to us. So that meant the community started owning the program itself. As Sisonke Boys Club and Sisonke Girls Club, we know (we are) sustainable because the community participates fully.

We also realized the Victoria Falls community started reaching out to us. When we posted this is what we’re doing with the garden, working with the boys and providing some food to the task force, they started coming to donate. They donated seeds and said anything you need, we’re there. This is very hard to get the locals donating to a local organization. But when you start creating that, you know you’re making an impact in the community.

We were recognized. When we started doing the garden, the government started supporting us via the Ministry of Agriculture. The agriculture office visited our garden and said this garden is registered with the Ministry of Agriculture and now, year after year, we will be giving you seeds and the pest control to use in the garden. COVID gave us the opportunity to have these stakeholders around us doing our work.

The Ministry of Education called us one of the major stakeholders in our community. They invited us, and we attended over three essential meetings about when to open schools and to bring our input. Now we’re partnering with the Ministry of Education and anything in the community about schools and children, we’re invited. We did not achieve this when things were easy. We did not throw in the towel. We sought opportunity. This is what it yielded.

Then the National Association for Nongovernmental Organizations registered us to be part of that association. We were called to a meeting for national development of strategy. So anything that has to do with national development, we are now involved. Our focus at heart was to help boys, but the manifestation of all this started following us. Our organization today is recognized because we saw an opportunity and seized it.

See Nyika’s profile on Global Sojourns Giving Circle website here