Mount Darwin Mission

At Least One Meal a Day

Help us with your donation and support our
school feeding project for more than
500 children and young people

The Problem

xx pupils aged xx to yy currently attend the primary and secondary schools at Mount Darwin Mission in Zimbabwe. Many of them have to walk many kilometres to school in the morning, the longest route is xx kilometres. Most of the children now come to school without breakfast or a snack. Many of them will also have little or nothing to eat in the evening. The reason for this is that the last rainy season in East Africa almost failed to materialise after 2023 and the harvests were miserable. This is fatal for the poor rural population: they live directly from the yield of their small subsistence farms.

The Project

This is where the Mahewu project comes in. Mahewu is a flour mixture made from maize and various other cereals as well as sugar and must be mixed with water 24 hours before serving. One cup, 300ml, replaces a full meal and the sugar means that children enjoy drinking it. They get the necessary nutrients and calories and can follow their lessons without being distracted by hunger. Mahewu is served twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, while on the other days the children are served the very popular Zimbabwean maize porridge sadza and beans with small Kapenta sardines. This meal plan follows a recommendation from the local health authority. The older pupils and weakened children are given additional quantities of maize meal, beans, soya cubes, cooking oil and oatmeal.

Please support the project with your donation.

For xx US$ a child is provided with a meal.
For xx US$ a child is provided with a meal for one trimester.
For US$ xx, the weakened and pubescent children (approx. xx% of all pupils) will be provided for one term.
For xx US$ all children of the Primary and Secondary School of Mount Darwin will be fed for one term.

Donate by bank transfer to: xxx

Gerd Henghuber will travel to Zimbabwe in November 2024 and hand over the amount received in US$ to Felix Mukaro. All donations will benefit the children without deduction. The equipment for preparing and serving the meals is available. Depending on the donations received and the prospects, the project will be expanded according to need, starting with children and young people who are already physically weak and in puberty. All beneficiaries are documented. Both the donations received and the utilisation of the funds are published on this website on an ongoing basis.

The Mission Station

Mount Darwin Mission was run by German Jesuits for decades and consists of a primary school and a secondary school, a hospital and a church. In the meantime, there are no more German missionaries and with them their former network of supporters in Europe is also missing. The current head of the mission, Fr Felix Mukaro, is therefore maintaining the former contacts and trying to establish new ones.

Fr. Felix Mukaro

Fr. Felix Mukaro is the head of the mission station.

Please write something about yourself here.

xx years old Fr Felix has bravely taken on the challenge of managing the remote mission station. He is a pastor, emergency helper, manager and fundraiser for the approximately xxx people who live around Mount Darwin. Fr Felix has been actively cultivating the former contacts to Germany for years, both within the church and beyond. He has long been friends with Gerd Henghuber from Munich, who runs this website and is always available to answer questions about this project, Fr Felix and the situation in Zimbabwe.

Just write an email to: gerd.henghuber@mountdarwin.info

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has been suffering for many years xxx

Climate change

According to the United Nations, southern Africa experienced the worst drought in decades in the summer of 2024. Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi have declared a state of disaster, affecting around 24 million people. After 2022/2023, the last rainy season was also extremely poor. In addition, the average temperatures in the region at the beginning of the year were five degrees higher than the long-term average. This is partly due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, which periodically warms parts of the equatorial Pacific and causes weather changes in other parts of the world, such as heatwaves in southern Africa. Studies suggest that weather events caused by El Niño will occur more frequently and more often in a warmer world. This means that Africa suffers particularly from the consequences of climate change. This directly threatens the food supply of many people. In Zimbabwe, around 7.6 million people are currently affected by the drought, half of the population. Around 2 million people are threatened by hunger.