The fundamental purpose of the project is to provide resources to poor and talented Dzivaresekwa orphans for their basic education and welfare.

The annual individual sponsorship fees for the year 2007 are as follows:

• Child in Primary School € 120
• Child in Secondary School, O-levels € 140, boarding € 600
• Child in Secondary School, A-levels € 160 euros, boarding € 620

In addition to the mandatory school uniforms and sports gear, these fees also entitle the child to a daily meal, the use of our library and extra lessons in Mathematics and English, as well as costs for basic medical treatment and annual special activities.

The provision of a daily mealie-meal or sadza (maize) meal is handled by a couple of trusted mothers at Dzivaresekwa No. 4 Primary School, where Seppo originally started the programme. We are currently contracted to purchase a monthly supply of 1000 kg maize flour from either the Grain Marketing Board or private farms. Maize is the staple food in the Zimbabwean kitchen and due to severe, extended economic hardships in Zimbabwe it is often in short supply. The mealie-meal is accompanied by vegetables as well as fish or meat. To ensure availability of meat we have had eight cows slaughtered in 2006. These days, our catering obligations require approximately 200 kg of beef a month.

The Dzikwa Trust's Zimbabwean volunteers end up spending quite a bit of time every month driving around, sourcing and delivering the food to the Dzivaresekwa No. 4 Primary School where they have kindly organised facilities for safe warehousing of the supplies.

The bank account for the support payments is:

Account No. 157235-168497 (Zimbabwen AIDS-orvot ry/Zimbabwe AIDS Orphans Registered Society) at Nordea Bank, Senaatintori, Helsinki, Finland.

The additional SWIFT code needed for foreign payments is NDEA FIHH and the IBAN code is FI9015723500168497.

In 2006 Zimbabwe Aids Orphans participated in two fundraising events in Finland; the Siuntio days, a local autumn fair in a region to the West of the Finnish capital region as well as the traditional Bank of Finland Christmas bazaar. At all of our fundraising events we sell Zimbabwean handcrafts such as textiles, hand printed cushion covers, Shona stone sculptures etc.

In 2007 these two events will be repeated. We also had a flea-market at the Siuntio bee-farmer’s society in early August 2007.

In December 2004 the leading Finnish ladies’ magazine “Eeva” wrote a 4-page article on our project. This increased the public interest and brought us a number of new sponsors. Click here for a link to the respective issue.

In October 2004 also the “Tsilari” magazine wrote a 2-page article in Helsinki slang about the project.