July 2024

Progress Newsletter

By Savannah Lira, PVF Program Manager and Andrea Smith, Program and Communications Associate

What do a secondary school in Zambia, a healthcare clinic in Zimbabwe, and a boarding school for girls in Nigeria have in common? They are all projects from Generosity in Action (GIA), a Designated Fund founded in 2004 by PVF board member Duncan Beardsley.

For almost 20 years, GIA supported people and communities in need identified by travelers to developing countries, with funds to support schools, clinics, wells, and wildlife conservation, with projects in Africa, Bhutan, Thailand, Peru and beyond. GIA provided a structure for travelers to support local villages and people by working closely with tour operators and lodges to provide oversight to projects in development.

Photo courtesy of The Time + Tide Foundation

In 2022, after hosting over 50 programs with $5.8 million in donations, the Generosity in Action fund sunset with six of the larger projects staying at PVF as their own funds: Bright Minds Africa, Delta Education Collective, Lesedi Schools and Clinic, Project Luangwa, Tafika Fund and Time & Tide Foundation. Each fund is based in Africa, supporting communities throughout Cameroon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Uganda.

The Time + Tide Foundation: In Zambia, 65% of girls drop out of school after the primary level, and only 3% of girls from high poverty areas complete high school, yet they comprise more than half of the population. The rate of return to education in terms of the labor market earnings is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet so few girls are able to access reliable, quality education and, by proxy, improved future economic prospects. The Time + Tide Foundation (the philanthropic arm of the Time + Tide Tourism Company) forges educational and economic pathways for some of the most historically disadvantaged residents in the communities that immediately neighbor their Time + Tide lodges, namely children with special needs, pre-adolescent girls and women who dropped out of school. These communities span 4 protected areas (3 in Zambia and 1 in Madagascar), 300 villages and 30 schools.

Project Luangwa: At the heart of Project Luangwa is the belief in empowering communities in Zambia through the benefits of tourism. Although tourism is the major economic driver in the area and provides many jobs, there are still many in the community who rely on subsistence farming for their livelihoods. On establishing Project Luangwa in 2010, some of the valley’s tour operators realized the need to empower communities and show the incredible benefits that wildlife and an unspoiled habitat brings to the region. By using a portion of the proceeds from each visitor, Project Luangwa seeks to improve education and gender equality in the Luangwa Valley through developing schools supporting girls and women by encouraging both self-esteem and self-reliance, and providing training facilities and helping to get more kids into school through sponsorship.

Photo courtesy of Lesedi Schools and Clinic

Lesedi Schools and Clinic: In 2013, one of the co-founders of Ngoko Safaris, Benson Siyawareva, got involved with the Ntabayengwe community and realized that many children were not attending school. Along with his business partner, Fiona and Graeme Thompson, Benson began working with the community on an ambitious plan to build a primary school in the local area, aiming to break the cycle of poverty through the power of education. Located in a rural area 15 minutes’ drive from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Lesedi now offers primary school, secondary school, and clinic.

"We established Lesedi to provide education and health to an impoverished community, but when you look a little closer we are actually educating 458 individual children with their own unique life stories."

Tafika Fund: Located in the vast and game-abundant Luangwa Valley of Eastern Zambia, Remote Africa Safaris is a safari operation and is actively involved, through its Tafika Fund, in sustainably uplifting the surrounding community and Mwanya area. In addition to an outpatient clinic, the Tafika Fund makes a significant difference to present lives and future aspirations of Mkasanga scholars. Full educational scholarships are offered to the top Mkasanga graduates each year, fully comprehensive including school fees, accommodation, food, travel and school material costs. Inevitably, the desire for tertiary education for their successful school leavers, found the Tafika Fund extending its support to aspiring students, now offering further sponsorship for skills training and college students every year.

Photos courtesy of the Tafika Fund

Bright Minds Africa: A team of Cameroonian and Nigerian women are on a mission to empower girls and women in their communities through education, healthcare, clean water projects, and microloans. Because they are from the communities they serve, they know what their communities need and how to use our limited funding to have the biggest impact. Bright Minds work in regions of West Africa experiencing armed conflict and extreme poverty, where most girls drop out of school before sixth grade and become young brides. Their holistic approach includes: increasing access to education, supporting student health and wellness, empowering adolescents, ending functional illiteracy, and creating economic stability.

Photo courtesy of Delta Education Collective

Delta Education Collective: In 1997, Uganda was one of the first countries to implement universal primary education, increasing enrollment 70% in one year from 3.1M to 5.3M students, and to 8.5M by 2013. Despite this progress, less than half of 12 year olds are literate and just over half of students who start primary school complete it. Delta Education Collective is a movement of parents, teachers and pupils working together to revolutionize the quality of Ugandan public primary schools. Their process begins with meeting with district leaders to see if they think mobilizing communities could improve schools in their district. From there they hire coaches, facilitating a process to imagine their ideal school and convert this vision into a “school scorecard,” summarizing the 5 metrics most important for them. Community volunteers create a plan to achieve their scorecard and they:

"measure, learn, improve and expand."

PVF is proud to have been a catalyst and able to provide the mechanism that allowed Generosity in Action to give a helping hand to those in need throughout Africa, as well as other unique programs throughout the world.

PVF regularly receives updates from our Designated Fund partners, highlighting their recent work, successes and current needs. It's our pleasure to share with you an excerpt from The Time + Tide Foundation's most recent quarterly newsletter:

This year we joined our partner organizations Project Luangwa and Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust in celebrating Menstrual Hygiene Day with the theme “Creating a Period-friendly World”.

During the event, the girls performed poems to an audience of over 200 residents, clearly describing the challenges girls face during their periods and highlighting the importance of societal acceptance of this physiological process. They also explained the connection between practising good menstrual hygiene and maintaining positive self-esteem. In preparation for the event, the girls had several sessions on reproductive health with a focus on the menstrual cycle, its phases and the various types of sanitary products available, such as reusable pads, period pants, menstrual cups, and disposable pads.

In many remote areas of Zambia, there are still taboos and myths associated with menstruation, including girls and women labelled as “unclean” and potentially harmful to others. By creating awareness about both the biology of menstruation and the harm of stigmas, we enable safer and more comfortable learning environments for girls in schools and greater acceptance in their homes and communities.

Savannah Lira, Program Manager, is responsible for program management and development, as well as communication materials at PVF. She is an AmeriCorps Alum and has a background in economic development and grantwriting.