Help Keep The Doors Open This Christmas

Urgent Appeal

In Zimbabwe, children and young people dream of reaching their highest potential, but poverty, early marriage and child labour pushed 39,736 children out of school last year alone. This Christmas, help us keep children in school and out of poverty.

The young person in our photo is 19 years old. Home is a single room in the Mbare Slum, one of Harare’s oldest and most crowded neighbourhoods. 1000 residents share a single washroom with four holes in the floor that serves as a community toilet. At night, she sleeps on the floor.

In Harare, saying you’re from Mbare carries a stigma that follows you. It can close doors before you’ve had the chance to knock, even for the most determined young people.

Yet when she talks about her future, she sounds like any of us at 19. She wants opportunities. She wants a career. She wants to build a life of she is proud of.

“I want to live to my highest potential.”

At Rafiki Girls Centre, one of our Zimbabwean partners, she is getting that chance: practical training, work experience and the confidence to aim high. The change in her is so clear that her friends have asked if they can join too.

She is not alone

Many of the young people our local partners work with have lost one or both parents. Many grow up in rural communities, among the most vulnerable in Zimbabwe. They carry the same hopes as children do around the world, and too many are still waiting for a chance to act on them.

Across the country, the need is growing. In 2025 alone, 39,736 children dropped out of school in Zimbabwe, pushed out by poverty, early marriage, pregnancy and child labour. One in three children is chronically malnourished. Nearly half of all children have no birth certificate, and without one they can’t graduate from secondary school.

Why we need you this Christmas

Our Zimbabwean partners are already changing realities for children and young people, community by community. But they can only keep going if we can.

ZET is a small charity, and this year the funding that keeps us running has been harder to find than ever. It pays for the people, partner support, safeguarding and monitoring behind every result below. It isn’t glamorous, but without it the work stops.

What we’ve achieved together

Working with Zimbabwean-led partners, ZET has helped:

• 7,700 children and 2,600 adults obtain birth certificates and ID

• more than 1,800 young women complete life-skills and vocational training at Rafiki

• around 85% of Rafiki graduates go on to further education or training, in a country where fewer than 35% of girls complete secondary school

• make more than 4,300 referrals to sexual and reproductive health services

• schools grow crop yields up to 10 times those of traditional methods, with one school providing 15,920 meals over two years

Where your gift goes

This is an appeal for ZET’s work as a whole. Your gift goes where it’s needed most, including the core costs that keep our partnerships running, so organisations like Rafiki can keep opening their doors to the many Kimberlys still waiting.

Please give this Christmas

Whether you give £10, £25, £50 or set up a monthly gift, you are helping to keep the door open.

And if you’d rather give a loved one something more meaningful than another present, give in their name and we’ll send you a card to pass on.

Thank you, and happy Christmas!

Zimbabwe Educational Trust has worked with Zimbabwean-led grassroots organisations since 1987 to keep children in school and out of poverty.