Zambia project profile

Siachitema ADP

Education
Under Zambia’s decentralisation policy, when a community has improved their school buildings to a required standard, the government supplies furniture and a teacher.

World Vision repairs and equips primary schools, builds high schools and provides toilets and accommodation for teachers. It promotes secondary education and raises awareness of the importance of educating girls. The ADP continues to support community schools it has established, using radio to access broadcast lessons; students in these centres now have a high level of achievement.

HIV and AIDS
HIV and AIDS threaten the progress made by communities, affecting the most productive age group and leaving children vulnerable.

World Vision trains counsellors and establishes committees to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS, care for affected people and support orphaned and vulnerable children. It links the committees with other local groups also addressing HIV and AIDS and encourages them to establish school anti-AIDS clubs to educate young people and use innovative ways of spreading HIV-prevention messages such as drama, music or sport

Health
Malaria, measles, anaemia and diarrhoea are dangerous health problems, especially among young children.

Siachitema ADP trains community health workers and traditional birth attendants to support the services of three World Vision-constructed health centres. These workers promote preventative healthcare, immunisation and better management of malaria and diarrhoea and provide services for pregnant women.

Agriculture
The Siachitema community depends largely on farming for food and income. Droughts are common, and corridor disease, spread by ticks on immune wild buffalo, wiped out most of the community’s cattle during the 1990s.

World Vision trains lead farmers in improved agriculture and soil conservation techniques so they can assist other farmers in improving and diversifying their crops.

Farmers trained by World Vision to multiply seeds of improved crop varieties can register with the Seed Control and Certification Institute. This increases availability of improved seeds and gives farmers a source of income.

Community drought-preparedness plans, based on traditional early warning, systems are improved and committees and structures established to mitigate the effects of drought. World Vision is introducing treadle water pumps for irrigation.

Community leadership
The ADP has established development project management units in 10 sub-centres throughout the area. Local people stand for election onto these committees and are trained by World Vision to plan, manage and evaluate activities in the long term.

Sustainable development
World Vision started Siachitema ADP in 1996, and is working with the community to enhance ongoing development. Progress is evaluated every four years, and when the community reaches its goals World Vision will begin to reduce its support, allowing the community to direct its own development.