The Kocebuka Community Foundation is a small NGO in Zimba, Zambia, led by Passwell Nyambe. Volunteers work with families to help them recognise common health problems, to know when specialist help is needed from the mission hospital at Zimba, and when things can be managed or supported without help. Kocebuka prioritises working with children to keep them healthy and well. Passwell says: "We teach children sound environmental and natural resources management. We teach them how to plant trees (which they are doing in the photograph). We gave some children 3 female goats each and they are to pass on three female goats to the next recipients. Goats can produce up to three kids in year. This can help families to get household income through sales and nutrition from milk and meat. We also support local subsistence farmers with agricultural information and skills in crop production"
After a skype session with our Occupational therapy students I introduced Passwell to MOOCs - free online courses in public health, maternal health, children's development and so on from leading international universities - which he found incredibly useful and shared with volunteers. Passwell says: "I have completed the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's MOOC 'Improving the health of women, children and adolescents, from evidence to action'. Currently I am studying 'Lean data approaches to measuring social impact and understanding disability'". Passwell does amazing work with many volunteers in rural Zimba - they have immense energy and commitment, but very little in the way of funding or resources. But he has to purchase internet and it's expensive - so instead of watching the MOOC videos, they read the transcripts together.
We want to raise enough to enable Passwell and his rural village volunteers to purchase enough internet time to study MOOCs and to watch the videos to learn, so that's what we'd like to raise money to achieve.