Category 1: Health and Social Welfare Winner — Jean Cornneck
Jean Cornneck established Mother of Peace Community to look after abandoned children by providing the structure of a home and family: to maintain language and cultural differences as far as possible; to bring children up to be responsible members of society and to provide care to destitutes that are terminally ill.
Finalist — Bibeat Gondo
Bibeat Gondo formed the Ark of God inspired by the harsh background she comes from. She grew up with a passion within her to help underprivileged children and orphans especially those who are still young and can’t make decisions on their own. Her main aim is to give those children the love they cannot get from a normal family set-up and make them like any other child growing up with parents around him/her.
Category 2: Arts and Culture
Winner — Makani Jinguri
Makani Jinguri started a programme called Dzepfunde Trust so as to address socio-economic challenges that children and women in marginalised rural and urban poor communities in Zimbabwe faced.
She started this project so as to take children out of the streets. The main aim of the project was to improve livelihoods of children and women through skills empowerment, provision of information and through good parenting.
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Finalist — Washington Masenda Washington Masenda is well known in Highfield community for mobilising young men and women who are unemployed and the under-priviledged.
Together As One was the baby born out of a need in the community to curb all the problems young people were facing.
His project was then formed with the aim and target of helping the unemployed and the underprivileged in the community to ensure a better future for them.
Category 3: Junior Citizen
Winner — Tatenda Songore
Tatenda Songore formed Youth Advocates Zimbabwe which looks into issues affecting young people such as crime, prostitution, unemployment, HIV and Aids and lack of basic rights.
It explores roles also civic responsibilities as well. The ultimate aim is service to humanity including those physically challenged battling against the odds in society.
Their goal is to empower young people about their reproductive rights and civic responsibilities through advocacy, information sharing and transformative education.
Finalist — Believe Guta Believe Guta formed Begu Holds Foundation in 2008 which targets the youths. It helps the youths in upgrading their lives especially those who are unemployed.
It encourages them to start small income-generating projects for their survival.The main aim of Begu is to help young people to be independent and have their own business.
Category 4: Education Winner — Cosmas Rongoti Cosmas Rongoti’s personal experience motivated him to establish Shanduko Yehupenyu Trust.
He said he grew up being abused by his stepmother and the main aim of the Trust is to make people realise and respect children’s rights and responsibilities.
Finalist — PatonyMusendo Patony Musendo formed Student Connect Trust to assist in filling educational training gaps in Zimbabwe. It was founded especially for students in high schools and tertiary institutions.
The purpose of this Trust is to groom well balanced students in all key areas of life with special focus on leadership and career development, life skills training and character building.
Category 5: Sports and Recreation
Winner — Siphambaniso Dube Siphambaniso Dube is a popular athlete in Bulawayo whose failure to make it in sport due to his parents’ insistence on education, led to the formation of a football club and later a football academy.
The academy has become a springboard for a number of footballers, stemming from the sprawling high-density suburbs of Bulawayo.
Dube is the founder and director of Ajax Hotspurs Football Club which has not only seen youths excel in their football careers, but has taken them out of the streets.
Finalist — Claudious
Mufandaedza Claudius Mufandaedza started a football club in the community of Budiriro as a way of taking youth and school children out from the streets.
This was after realising bad behaviour by the kids in the community because these children are unemployed and some do not have money for school fees.
He chose soccer as a better way of keeping children busy and they would not engage in bad activities which would affect the community as a whole.
This project is targeting to spearhead behavioural change of youths in the community and to empower them through soccer.
Category 6: Technology and Infrastructure
Winner — Edson Gumbo Edison Gumbo is involved in a project of drilling boreholes in rural Gwanda. Since March this year he has embarked on re-building the Sengezana Dam wall.
However, the community project he is working on that has hogged the limelight is the re-building of the damwall at Sengezana Dam in the Ntepe area of rural Gwanda which was washed off by Cyclone Eline.
Finalist — Vengesai Mirira In Gokwe Nembudziya — In the deep arid land of sub-Saharan Zimbabwe water is a rare and special resource especially in the dry season.
People travel long distances in search of the precious liquid. Mirira saw the need in the community for provision of water.
He decided to start a project in Gokwe to curb the water crisis in the area. The main thrust of the project was to help the community to have all the resources they need for their survival.
Category 7: Environment and Agriculture Winner — Simangaliphi Ngwabi Simangaliphi Ngwabi was instrumental in the setting up of the Umzingwane Dairy Project, which has a milk-processing and selling point at Mawabeni business centre in Umzingwane District.
She is working on a voluntary project where women from Bubi will be given small stock in the form of goats for their own breeding projects.
Her work is mainly to do with extension and technical advisory services as well as liaison with livestock stakeholders and industry. She also supplies farmers with technical production information.
Finalist — Kheyi Masuku Kheyi Masuku grew up in Ntabazinduna where he developed an interest in growing trees as early as the age of 12. He started the tree-planting project four years ago after realising empty traditional beer boxes were littering the environment.
Deforestation in the country’s largest city, Bulawayo, was taking its toll on the environment in the light of load shedding that has become the order of the day in the city’s suburbs.
He has managed to plant thousands of trees both indigenous and exotic especially drought resistant ones under the project and distributed them for free.
