The Sunday News
Tinomuda Chakanyuka, Sunday News Reporter
A NEW Zealand-based organisation, the Zimbabwe Rural Schools Library Trust has lined up a series of fundraising activities for this year to raise $100 000 towards setting up libraries at rural schools around Zimbabwe.
On Saturday this week the organisation will host their first fundraising gig for 2017, a fundraising sausage sizzle at Te Rapa in Hamilton, New Zealand.
The event will start at 9am to 4pm New Zealand time with organisers saying more similar events were lined up throughout the year.
Sausage sizzles are a tradition in New Zealand, used by charitable organisations, to raise money for various causes.
Zimbabwe Rural Schools Library Trust chairperson Mr Driden Kunaka told Sunday News that the money raised from the fundraising activities would go towards shipping library books from New Zealand to Zimbabwe.
A musical album with songs on reading and libraries, and a movie is also in the offing from the organisation.
“The sausage sizzle on 7 January 2017 will be the first of many more to follow in the year. We have two major goals for this year: To buy a 20-feet container, load it with books and pay for its shipment to Zimbabwe and to complete a musical album with songs on reading and libraries.
“Our financial target for 2017 is $100 000. Money raised from sausage sizzles and other fundraising activities to come in the year will go towards the two objectives,” he said.
The Trust has held similar engagements in the past and managed to ship a container full of books from New Zealand to Zimbabwe earlier this year.
Mr Kunaka said apart from this Saturday’s sausage sizzle, other fundraising activities lined up for the year include a fun run/walk and a movie set to be out around March this year.
“We also have a fundraising fun run/walk which will be in its third year in 2017, a fundraising movie planned for around March, and we hope that the musical album will also generate some income,” he said.
Mr Kunaka added that his organisation was also looking at expanding its resource base by spreading fundraising activities to other countries.
“We also hope to fundraise in other countries. The trust is in the process of registering in Australia and in the United Kingdom, so the two new chapters, which we hope will become operational in the first quarter of 2017, will be additional platforms for fundraising,” he said.
So far the trust is only registered in New Zealand and Zimbabwe.
Mr Kunaka said his organisation’s prime focus was rural schools because they were marginalised in terms of accessing reading material.
He said the organisation had so far supplied books to more than 40 schools in all provinces in Zimbabwe with the exception of Matabeleland North, which they hope to reach before the end of the year.
Dekezi Primary and Secondary School in Filabusi, Matabeleland South Province recently received a consignment of library books sourced by the Trust.
“The poorest schools are mostly found in the rural areas. We have seen a lot of stories reported in the media of schools in the countryside which do not even have classrooms.
“We will certainly reach every province by mid-2017,” he said.
Apart from supplying reading material, Mr Kunaka said his organisation also encouraged recipient schools to start planning for the construction of libraries where they do not exist.
He added that the Trust was also working with successful former rural schools pupils and their children to help set up libraries at their former schools.
“We have a few examples of school libraries that have been constructed as a result of this project which is still at infancy.
There is the Guramatunhu Library at St Peters Tokoyo in Nyazura that was officially opened this year, which was sponsored by Dr Solomon Guramatunhu who is a product of that school.
There is the Gogo Grace Mutemasango Memorial Library at Chikowore School in Mhondoro which is sponsored by Wilma Sweeney, daughter of the late Mrs Grace Mutemasango, and there are various other projects which are work in progress,” he said.
The Trust, which was launched in 2014, also offers professional and technical advice to schools that will be setting up the libraries.
@irielyan
