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This video has been produced by Dr. Irene Banda, the Founder of TUCUZA Associates and TUCUZA Farm and Community Initiative as part of the virtual course journey:
“Unleashing the Power of Homes to Pioneer Planetary Regeneration” held from October 2022 till January 2023.
Dr. Irene Banda is a seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for empowering upcoming entrepreneurs and developing communities. Irene’s final assignment in the course journey was a demonstration of the integral design and functioning of the TUCUZA Initiative and her commitment to evolve TUCUZA Associates into a Home for Humanity,
Since then, TUCUZA Associates has been acknowledged as a new Home for Humanity.
This is Irene’s Commitment Statement:
“Mwaiyai Mwane! I commit to do my utmost to work with the communities in North-Western Province of Zambia, for transformation on their terms, and in so doing contribute to planetary regeneration.”
Since January, the community farm that has been set up by Tucuza in North-Western Province of Zambia in 2020 has made significant further progress.
In Irene’s own words: “It had been problematic to find a good agronomist as farm supervisor. This has been a difficult time as we have tried many college graduates without much luck until March 2023 when we found one who has already moved to the farm and is making very good changes. We are excited with this development because we can now see that our plans will work out.
It has also been our intention to work with the community and contribute to their development by ensuring that we identify strong local leadership through whom we could channel development initiatives. We realised that as a private entity, TUCUZA could not bear the cost of mobilising the communities and enhancing production. However, through our networks, we can mobilise support once local leadership is in place. To this extent, we have managed to help two communities to develop local leadership teams.
Muzabula Community: This is in Chief Kapijimpanga’s area in Solwezi District. We worked with a group of farmers in 2019 who had been earlier supported by First Quantum Foundation (FQM), connected to a local mine. This partnership did not go as planned because the farmers were used to the FQM model where FQM staff provided monitoring support. We, therefore, asked the community leaders to start the process of developing themselves as a community. We helped them register a cooperative … This cooperative has 45 men and 53 women. All of them are into farming and have varied sizes of land. They want to plant crops like beans, maize and also getting into poultry and small animals.
Mutanda Community: This community is in Chief Mumena’s area in Kalumbila District. This is closer to where we have the TUCUZA Farm. We are part of this community and have identified a young Pastor, Billy Mangwela, who is helping mobilise the community. On our part, we support responsible farming practices and general development in the area. To this end, we sent Pastor Billy and another community member for a one-week course in Conservation Farming. We are also in the process of acquiring some computers for them so they can train especially youths how to use the computer. We hope that this will be possible through our networks and are grateful for any support.”
You can contact Dr. Irene Banda and her Home for Humanity directly if you would want to support or get directly involved with their important work with rural communities at: ibamuta@gmail.com.
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