Parish Outreach

Tariro Youth Project

Meredith Hannen

Meredith Hannen, daughter of past rector Bishop John Hannen, went to Zimbabwe in September 2009 to help with the Tariro Orphan Youth Project. Visiting Community of the Resurrection in Yorkshire with her parents last Easter, she met the founder of the project and soon found herself volunteering for a year.

The government of Zimbabwe stops funding orphans at age 14 if they have living relatives, though due to poverty and epidemic diseases, such relatives are often not in a position to help them. The intent of the project is to provide life skills and trades training to enable young people in Harare to support themselves and improve their community. The annual cost of this project is expected to be £30 000.

Meredith reported from Sunridge, Harare that she was organizing training projects in sewing, batik, tie-dye, beauty therapy, woodworking and metalworking.

Electricity there is hit-or-miss, telephone service is cell-phone only, and internet is available by the minute in town. They do have hot and cold running water, though. Sunday attendance at the nearby Anglo-catholic church in Highfield runs 1500 to 2000.

I'm really worried about the young people leaving our orphanages. They have no proper homes to go to, no jobs, no training, no hope. Nicolas Stebbing CR

June 2010, Meredith reported that she was in the village of Nyaga in eastern highlands of Zimbabwe near the border with Mozambique, planning construction of a new two-storey library building for the community. As well as surveying the site and designing the drainage and foundations, she added a children's section to the plan. Children in that area are not allowed into the school libraries until age 10, so she wanted to give them the opportunity to learn to love to read before then, because of her own fond memories of library visits as a child.

She also travelled to Zambia to study several other project sites to see whether their methods might be adopted for the library project: Solar AID does solar energy projects in developing countries; Pestalozzi, a trade school for rural children, makes roofing tiles and brick composting systems that produce fuel gas and clean water.