ProgrammesSocial Services
Young people and women steering their own futures.
Afro Edge backs young people and women with sport, skills, enterprise and support, so households can cope with shocks and take their own next steps.
The need
Zimbabwe is a young country, and Victoria Falls is a young town. Many of its young people leave school with talent and ambition and nowhere to use them. Jobs are scarce, even in a town that welcomes visitors from all over the world, and the football pitches and play spaces where friendships and dreams were built are shrinking.
For families living alongside wildlife, danger is close. An agitated wild animal that has just swallowed plastic can threaten anyone in its way. Elephants and other wildlife break fences, water pipes and walls, take lives and raid crops, and a family can lose a season’s harvest overnight and go hungry. Prices climb faster than wages and the rains fail more often. In many homes it is a mother or a grandmother who holds everything together: feeding and protecting the children, caring for the elderly, and finding the day’s income, with almost no chance to save or start something of her own.
What we do
Youth sport
Coaching and managing local football teams, giving talented young people a path and a place to belong. Some of our teams have won trophies.
Childcare and recreation
Play, learning and activities for children aged 5 to 15, and for youth aged 16 to 25, away from risky environments.
Orphans and vulnerable children
Support for children in a home or kindergarten setting, linked to the psychosocial camps in our Healthcare programme.
Youth enterprise
The Sizinda vermicompost and organic farm is run by young people, who build skills and earn from it.
Group volunteering
Groups can design a project with our team, working with community psychologists to fit local needs.
Our track record
Our social work started with sport and childcare and has grown into enterprise.
- Local football teams coached and managed by volunteers and local staff, some for eight months or more.
- Childcare and recreation for children and youth since the early years of the organisation.
- Youth-managed composting and farming at Sizinda.
Women’s livelihoods and young leaders.
We are building women’s economic empowerment into everything we do: savings groups, small enterprise and a share of the farm’s work and income.
We are also growing youth leadership: young people on our teams, on partner boards and in the streets and schools where the work happens.
Back Social Services.
Your support funds coaching, youth enterprise and support for households. Businesses can offer work experience and markets for produce. Groups can volunteer.