Mozambique: programs & priorities

ChildFund Australia's affiliate organisation in Mozambique offers around 30,000 children and their families with support in education, health and early childhood development services.

In Mozambique, classrooms average 60 students each, and often swell to 90 students per class. Teachers lack the formal training and the resources necessary for adequate education services. ChildFund in Mozambique is working with families and communities to give more children access to education.

Many children are born without prenatal and post-natal care, limited access to immunisations and they often suffer from malnutrition. ChildFund in Mozambique is working to strengthen community centres, hospitals, and education facilities which promote child wellbeing and development. ChildFund in Mozambique is also monitoring the growth rate of children in our programs. Through these community-based initiatives, we will work together to give children a healthy start on life.

Due to the extremely low incomes of families in Mozambique, and resulting food insecurity, ChildFund in Mozambique programs focus on alleviating hunger. This includes teaching communities better farming techniques, ways to preserve food for lean times and providing access to safe water in its communities.

Development in progress

In the Zavala District in the southern coastal area of Mozambique, students attend class in huts made out of reeds and sticks with roofs made of sheet metal held down by cinder blocks. Up to 50 students pack into these little school houses; they sit on dirt floors or rough logs for lack of desks and chairs, sometimes there are no bathrooms or even latrines, often they are taught by teachers that have received little or no formal education. Most students can not afford pencils and other basic school supplies.

To assist children and improve their chances for a good education, ChildFund in Mozambique has identified 21 schools in the Zavala District which need assistance. ChildFund in Mozambique is buying desks and chairs and is replacing teaching aids, such as blackboards, rulers, geometric shapes, erasers, basic reference texts and notebooks. While these are basic tools in the developed world, for this rural Mozambique village, these are precious new keys for learning.

Another major introductory contribution from ChildFund in Mozambieque is the installation of Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) latrines to provide a safe sanitary system at five schools that did not have bathrooms or latrines. These school sites were chosen based on the number of students and local availability of water.