0 Safe House to be Built
Zambia
Community Location: North of Lusaka, Lusaka Province
- Zambia population: 19,801,577 people
- Lusaka population: 2.986,097 people
The Trajectory of Poverty in Zambia
Many Zambian youth and families endure serious hardships due to extreme poverty and lack of affordable, secure housing. About 70% of the population resides in slums with insufficient access to water, hygiene, and sanitation provisions.[1]
Zambia is deemed one of the poorest countries in the world[2], with an overwhelming 64% of the population living on less than $1.25 a day.[3]
The added layer to these poverty-stricken conditions is that many girls and young women do not receive the opportunity to receive an education. In rural areas, 27% of women have received no education, largely due to poverty, pregnancies, and early marriages.[4]
Child marriage is prevalent in Zambia, with an estimated 1.7 million child brides.[5] The implications of gendered educational outcomes are critical. There is a stark difference in female literacy (67%) versus male literacy (82%) in Zambia.[6] This discrepancy is a major obstacle for girls’ and women’s autonomy and personal economic development.
Evidence suggests that early marriages among women is a significant contributor to school dropout rates among girls and young women in Zambia.
Our Impact in Lusaka
World Housing is in partnership with Baraka Community Partnerships as well as the Koru Pacific Foundation for this project in the Lusaka province. In working together, our goal is to improve educational opportunities for girls and young women in Zambia through providing safe housing and improved infrastructure for learning.
As a first step towards this reality, World Housing is directly working with Baraka to build a Safe House as well as a vegetable garden and orchard. The Safe House will provide secure housing for 30 students at a time, who will live there for a period of 3 to 5 years, until they are better equipped to pursue other opportunities. Five full-time teachers in addition to support staff will also be housed in the Safe House.
World Housing has also partnered with Baraka to build a Teachers Housing Village adjacent to the Baraka Learning Centre. The Learning Centre is located in a central rural location near Kapiri-Mposhi, north of Lusaka in the Central Province, and currently serves over 20 rural schools in the area.
0 Girls to be Housed in the Safe House
World Housing’s Goals
Our aim for this project is to cultivate a legacy for girls in the community to not only receive a valuable education with a safe place to live, but on a greater scale, to tackle the gendered trajectory of poverty and education for women in Zambia.
The total cost of the project will be $100,000 plus additional costs for the new well which will be approximately $10,000. Through the funding of the Safe House there will be construction jobs and teaching opportunities for locals created by this project.
Education is a vital building block for communities and it can have drastically positive reverberations on the lives of young people and their families. With this project and many more to come, World Housing is set on addressing some of the challenges that communities in Zambia face around secure housing and education.
We ultimately hope to create meaningful change in the lives of young girls and women in Zambia, helping them lift themselves out of the gendered cycle of poverty by prioritizing their safety, well-being, and education.
0 Vegetable Garden and Orchard
0 Full-Time Teachers and Support Staff
Each of the teaching and support staff will have housing in the Safe House.
$0 Raised
We need another $10,000 from World Housing Donors.