About Us
Whispering Hope Trust is registered in Zimbabwe as a Trust in terms of the Deeds Registry Act (Chapter 20:05). We are an emergency relief and development organisation with an office in Bulawayo. We believe in a world where people can break through barriers of poverty, hunger and social exclusion. We support local communities in their quest to improve food security through sustainable climate smart agriculture practices and utilisation of natural resources programs, access to clean portable water and safe disposal of waste through water and sanitation programs, reduced nutrition related diseases like stunting in under 2years through maternal health care and nutrition programs, equality and equity in access to education through school and out of school programs that support girl child , economic empowerment through establishment and strengthening sustainable sources of livelihoods to build community resilience against shocks and equal access to financial lines of credit to all. We subscribe and value human dignity, non social inclusion, non-discrimination based on gender, sex, race, tribe and association, compassion and justice guide us in all our engagements.
Operational Strategy
It is estimated that 75% of all farmers are living in poverty, 800 million people suffer from hunger and 2 billion experience micronutrients deficiency. Current agricultural production systems are neither sustainable nor sufficiently efficient to ensure food and nutrition security for present and future generations as they are not climate smart and have failed to answer some of the problems posed by climate change. This has been largely due to techniques that do not preserve and conserve the natural resources and environment and lack of or poor adoption of policies that promote sustainable utilisation of natural resources. Whispering Hope strives to establish and strengthen value chains to grow, harvest, preserve, process, transport, market and improved consumption of balanced diet by communities to eradicate the worst vices faced by communities which is hunger and poverty. We trigger positive changes in markets that are inclusive, accessible to small holder and communal farmers, agripreneurs as well as environmentally and financially sustainable to transform agricultural systems. We fight to ensure viable sources of livelihoods are established to contribute to the fight against poverty, hunger and undernourishment.
Whispering Hope, A Unique Organisation
This systemic change demands for a long breath and a multi stakeholder approach. We adopt inclusive social change and enhance a business oriented way of working and engagement.
Key points in our strategy are:
- Targeting the marginalised communities which are resource poor and give them a source of livelihood to move them out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
- Exploitation of local resources in an environmental friendly way and ensure sustainable utilisation for current and future generations.
- Employ watershed management principles around productive assets to prolong their life span.
- Strengthen linkages from community level.
- Infuse indigenous knowledge systems in our programming.
- Design programs identified and crafted by communities to ensure sustainability beyond program life.
- Establish and train committees to manage assets for and by the community.
- Understanding the impact of religion on development.
Program Interventions
Our program interventions focus on:
- Improved access to portable safe drinking water by reducing walking distance to water points.
- Establish and strengthening of livelihood sources to improve household income and develop resilience against shocks through establishment of income generating activities like ISALs, small livestock, market gardening, bakery products among others.
- Farmer training on climate smart agricultural practices both in crops and livestock.
- Improved access to agricultural inputs and financial lines of credit.
- Value chain development and market linkages.
- Collective marketing and bargaining by communities.
- Infants and young child feeding and sanitation.
Our Role in the Community
We strengthen sustainable agricultural systems through 3 interlinked goals:
- Food and nutrition security where we strengthen the capacities of individual households and groups to produce sufficiently to feed families and surplus to sell, earning income in the process. This broadly is farming as a business (FaaB). We build capacity of communities and producer groups to improve and diversify their production and have better access to the market, financial services and other input suppliers. We promote through community level structures awareness raising and advocacy to promoting health and sustainable food and nutrition access by all community members.
- Economic empowerment where we support resource poor farmers and producer groups to seize economic opportunities to establish, improve and sustain their livelihood sources. We use market systems development approach to empower communities to have access to productive and marketing resources and values chain development. This in turn will better position farmers in value chains, improve product quality and access to market and understanding market evolutions and use that as a tool for decision making.
- Resilience building and disaster management goal looks at emergency response where we capacitate communities to be resilient and adequately be prepared to respond to disasters and shocks. We mainstream disaster risk reduction and resilience building and covid 19 in all our programs and committees are set up by communities to champion such program for and by the communities.
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Source: Whispering Hope Trust
