The Friends of Kahungwe Association raises funds to provide the children of Kahungwe with a safe place to study and to increase the chances for the children, particularly girls, to complete secondary schooling.
Kahungwe is a small village in the Zambezi Valley in the north-east of Zimbabwe. There is a primary school in the village, but the older school children have to walk 10km to the closest secondary school. While to many tourists, observing African wildlife in its natural habitat is an exciting and memorable experience, in remote Zimbabwean villages, many school children, who encounter elephants, buffaloes or hyenas on their long walks home from schools think differently. To avoid close encounters children often leave school early, missing out on supervised study time and access to school books in the library. Once home, there are many chores to attend to, especially for the girls, and by the time all the work is done and children are free to study it is dark and there is no electricity, nor school books at home.
In 2019 the association successfully achieved its goal of providing the community with a library built next to the primary school. Volunteers from the community and the team from Australia joined together to complete the first stage of the building project and achieved their goal of providing a safe place to study for the children of the community. The association has an ongoing role in subsidising school fees and improving study facilities in Kahungwe.