Quaker Africa Interest Group (QAIG)

Links to Friends’ activities and interests in Africa

Southern Africa

Madagascar

Money for Madagascar

Money for Madagascar (MfM)’s approach is to support Malagasy people in finding their own solutions and changing their own communities. We make grants to a network of partners who contribute the ideas and the manpower. MfM provides the funds and the oversight. Over nearly 30 years we have been responsible for planting thousands of trees, building over 100 school classrooms, setting up school vegetable gardens and environmental education schemes, supporting prisoners, helping vulnerable women and girls with vocational training, feeding and educating destitute children, constructing wells and latrines and supporting numerous small income-generating schemes. We started with the help of Swansea Quakers and four members of our present management committee are Friends.Madagascar

Website: www.moneyformadagascar.org

Blog: http://moneyformadagascar.blogspot.com

E-mail: Money for Madagascar

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Zambia

Friends of Monze

Friends of Monze is a concern of Bridgend Quaker Meeting. We work closely with partners based in the Monze District of Zambia to help disadvantaged and orphaned children and communities who suffer from low educational attainment and poor nutrition.

Our aims are:-

  • To improve education we built 21 schools, equipping them with books, desks, sports equipment and houses for the teachers.
  • To improve health we drilled or repaired 30 bore holes supplying clean drinking water using hand and solar powered pumps. We build pit latrine toilets. We teach sanitation and hygiene to prevent the spread of infectious diseasesWe carry out a program of school eye tests, treating many children for eye infections.
  • To combat climate change: – we established 19 school gardens to feed children and generate income. We teach school children and communities to grow drought resistant crops e.g. casava and harvest water using ditches and dams. We promote fuel-efficient stoves to help prevent deforestation.
  • To keep girls in school we provide menstrual hygiene management kits and training. We teach human rights.

   

Friends of Monze is a Quaker Recognised Body

Contact Details:

www.friendsofmonze.org

deana.owen@friendsofmonze.org

(amended February 2026)

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Zimbabwe

Dabane Water Workshops

Dabane Water Workshops of Zimbabwe were founded in 1991 to provide clean water supplies and food security to the dry rural areas of South Western Zimbabwe. Dabane has focussed on finding local solutions, such as the development of simple hand pumps to draw water from beneath dry river beds. One of their most important principles is working with communities to manage their own solutions, with appropriate back-up. More recently Dabane has grown to encompass other desperate areas of need, and their expertise is well respected not only in Zimbabwe but throughout many African countries. Mid-Somerset Area Meeting assists through the Dabane Support Fund.

Okashana - Tudi

Dabane Water Workshops is a Quaker Recognised Body of Britain Yearly Meeting

Email: Veronica Watts

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Zimbabwe

Peace Works Zimbabwe

Peace Works Zimbabwe raises money, mostly from British and European Quakers, to support two peacebuilding projects in Zimbabwe:  Alternatives to Violence (AVP) training for community groups and Peace Clubs in Schools.  Both of these projects are managed locally by Alternatives to Violence Zimbabwe (AVPZ), based in Bulawayo Friends Meeting House. 

The Alternatives to Violence training is delivered free of charge to a wide variety of community groups, including NGO and church leaders, prison staff, social workers, women at risk of abuse, sex workers, men’s groups, young people, and orphans and vulnerable young people. A recent development, in cooperation with the Ministry of Women and Small and Medium Enterprises, is the training of the owners of small and medium businesses, who often encounter conflict and threats of violence.

The Peace Clubs in Schools project, trains teachers in mediation and AVP techniques whilst also encouraging them to run voluntary Peace Clubs in their schools for students. Students become ambassadors for peace and justice in their schools, including offering peer mediation and conflict resolution training. The presence of a Peace Club in the school has been shown to have a positive impact on the peaceful ethos of many schools. Peace-building has been shown to build resilience in young people; Zimbabwe youth face many adverse circumstances at the present time.

These projects are operating at a key time in the development of Zimbabwe as it emerges from its violent past. The Ministry of Education includes conflict resolution in the primary and secondary curriculum, but as yet provides no further guidance.  Corporal punishment in schools has been made illegal and new forms of discipline are needed. PWZ has been involved in the development of a manual for Zimbabwe secondary schools and it is hoped that a primary version will follow. 

AVPZ is now well established in the Bulawayo area, and other hubs are being built up including in Harare.

Peace Works Zimbabwe is an adopted concern of Milton Keynes Local Meeting and Luton and Leighton Area Meeting and is a Quaker Recognised Body.

Below: picture shows a groups of social workers who completed their basic training in June 2026.

[image to be supplied]

Contact details:

peaceworkszim@gmail.com

www.peaceworkszimbabwe.org

(amended February 2026)

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