BBC Radio 4 Appeal on Birth Registration

Almost 50% of Zimbabwean children lack birth certificates. Without legal identity, these children are denied the right to access healthcare, complete school, exercise their right to vote, or receive legal protection. This exclusion traps families in cycles of poverty and marginalisation. Through our partnership with Trinity Project Zimbabwe, we provide legal, logistical, and advocacy support to ensure children secure their rightful documentation. One of the most fundamental and impactful things you can do. Help us end Zimbabwe's birth registration crisis now.

Exist to Exist

Securing birth documentation for vulnerable children and families involves bottom-up and top-down approaches. We work with families such as Precious (seen above) to gather evidence and submit the required paperwork. We speak with communities to increase their understanding and valuation of birth registration. We collaborate with stakeholders to ensure more joined-up service delivery. We liaise with institutions and duty bearers to hold them to account and press for improvements in process, policy and law. Ensuring people exist legally gives them a chance in life.

Donate now and your gift could be match-funded, pound for pound, up to £6,000.

Click Donate to see what your funds could do.

Voiced by Africa Brooke, our BBC Appeal script:

"Let me tell you about Precious, a mother of six, though now looking after five. Raising her children alone, she was selling vegetables to survive, and earnt very little - she couldn’t always feed her children the diet they needed.

It was only when two of her children became malnourished and were admitted to hospital, that another issue came to light. None of the children had birth certificates.

That’s when the Zimbabwe Educational Trust and their partner Trinity Project stepped in to help.

A case officer visited Precious at home. She was helped to gather the official documents she needed to prove the children were hers. The case officer went to the registry office with Precious, and paid her bus fares. Together, they submitted the applications for birth certificates for her children.

Finally, after weeks of effort, Precious held the birth certificates for her children—documents that opened the doors to change. But sadly, that help came too late for one child Needmore who, aged just two years old, passed away from malnutrition.

Today, listening to the sound of her children at play, Precious says that for the first time, she’s optimistic.

Her children are in school. With birth documentation, she’s receiving government support, including vitamin supplements for her children and access to hospital care.

It costs £22 pounds to support a woman like Precious through the whole process of birth registration. It’s enough to pay for someone to give legal advice, to secure the missing paperwork and to cover travel expenses. You can help today and two supporters of the charity will match donations to a total of six thousand pounds.

Thank you.”

Africa Brooke

Listen again (please do not donate via the BBC website or phone service, as you may end up donating to the wrong charity). You can donate to ZET on this page.