Why it's needed

HIV and AIDS have hit the teaching profession particularly hard. According to UNAIDS, “In Zambia HIV and AIDS are expected to reduce the number of teachers by (the year) 2010 from an expected 59,500 to 50,000”. Tens of thousands more are missing work due to illness, caring for sick relatives or attending funerals.

Once they have successfully completed their primary and secondary education with our support, Cecily's Fund offers our graduates, like Misozi pictured here, the opportunity to train as teachers. This not only helps to replace some of those lost teachers, but makes the young people themselves eligible for a secure job and a respected position in society.

Having a good job helps to protect people from HIV infection as they can then afford good nutrition, healthcare and are less likely to be drawn into lifestyles which increase the danger of infection. Without education, poverty can drive young people into sex work or drugs to survive, which greatly increases their chances of contracting HIV.

"My name literally means 'tears of sorrow'. I really like teaching, I feel good when I’m doing it… Now my name means ‘tears of happiness’! " Misozi

How it works

Our partner organisation, Hodi, delivers this programme, placing students who we have supported through school in two local colleges; Kitwe College of Education, and the Copperbelt Secondary Teaching College.

In 2007 the Ministry of Education took action to address the backlog of trained teachers. 6,300 new teachers were recruited to fill vacancies nationwide. Furthermore, 4,000 additional new posts were created and filled as part of the Ministry’s efforts to increase the number of teachers in each school (and hence reduce the pupil teacher ratio). With this encouraging news from the Zambian government, and having reviewed the programme in 2007, we decided, to increase the number of young people that we help to become teachers.

Brave Lukwesa, left, is a wonderful example of what can be achieved with an education. Having lost his parents at an early age and been brought up by his aunt, Brave was supported through school and teacher training college and is now a science teacher at a government school. He is not only self reliant, but looks after his brother and young cousin as well as running a youth group for deprived children in his community.

"Whatever little I get I try to help others, not just my family, because I have been helped. I know what it means to be an orphan." Brave

It costs around £400 cover the fees of a year's full-time teacher training at one of Kitwe's teacher training colleges.  

To complement their work in primary and secondary education and teacher training, Hodi also works at local, regional and national level to advocate for better employment opportunities for orphans and other vulnerable children in teaching and other professions.