Tell us about how Habakkuk Trust started

Habakkuk Trust was started by a group of Christian activists, business persons and concerned citizens in August 2000. Basically they were five of us. There was Mandla Nkomo, Reverend Shana, Andrew Cunningham, myself and Sibanda. We were worried about the direction of the nation and we felt it was important for a Christian voice to be amplified to give direction and order to the nation, that is how Habakkuk Trust started. Importantly, our primary focus at that time was around land issues because the country was focused on the land grab. So we were advocating for the land reform to be done in a peaceful, orderly, systematic and productive manner. We did our first paper that year highlighting Christian perspective on land grabs. After that we then evolved as an organisation, we focus a lot on promoting active citizenship especially by grassroots communities. That’s where we started and that’s where we are now.

What is your main objective?
Our main objective is to enhance citizen participation in decision making
Tell me about some of the project you have going on?
Our main programme is the Local Level Advocacy Programme (LLAP) which seeks to empower grassroots communities to have a voice. We equip them with advocacy skills, so that they can advocate on issues that affect them. We do this in four stages. Firstly, we train them on how to advocate, giving them different skills such as lobbying, community mobilisation, resource mapping, advocacy and also knowledge about their rights. After the trainings, we set up Community Advocacy Action Teams so they can identify their own advocacy issues. We then provide platforms to interact with community members at a public consensus building meeting and let the community prioritise advocacy issues the Action Team would have identified. We also have policy dialogue meetings where the Action Teams present position papers to decision makers and policy makers on those advocacy issues. We have done this in 55 communities in Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and Bulawayo so we actually have about 55 community Advocacy Action Teams, each on average having about 15 people. These are local structures that advocate on local level issues.

Is that the main project?
That is the flag ship programme that the gives birth to other programmes. For example, we have had a strengthening rural civil society programme, where we were building the capacity of a rural-civil society organisationally, training them in organisational development and financial management. We also have programming around sport and arts with a newsletter where we use sporting icons as a tool of encouraging youth participation in decision making. We are hoping to use film as well, to reach out to more people and social media as well because workshops and meetings we can only reach maximum up to a thousand people. But if you use film, you reach a larger crowd. We are really looking at how we can use these platforms.

Is that a program on its own?
It’s a standalone although we are still piloting it and we have not really spelled it out but i know we have really done it since 2013. We target important days such as World Human Rights Day and we bring in sports icons and they play with local soccer teams or netball teams. We also bring in other arts groups that also help in reaching out to communities. We have a dance group called Victory Siyanqoba coming in Matobo. Dance and drama are used as a tool of creatively reaching out to young people. Young people generally won’t go to workshops or public meetings but will go to more interactive events such as arts using music, dance and poetry.

Tell me more about your team?
We have a solid staff team. We have management team composed of the Chief Executive Officer, the Programmes Manager, and the Finance Manager. We also have a very strong support team made out of Programme officers, Information officers and the Administration team. There are a team that is able to multitask because there is a lot of work that we do. They are also sold on the vision because we are a Christian organisation with a mission is to influence the Biblical transformation of communities through advocacy, research, information dissemination and capacity development. So primarily, we are a ministry.

Do you have exciting projects for this year?
Our Local Level Advocacy Programme is an ongoing programme which is relevant anywhere and anytime. We are planning to scale that up to different communities. We are also looking forward to training of citizen journalists to be able to generate news on development related issues. We are also looking at scaling up youth programming, we want to engage young people and get them to be more involved in decision making and developmental processes. We will also explore critically the use of sport and arts as a tool of encouraging young people to engage decision makers and policy makers on community issues. We will also increase programming that encourages active participation of women as well. We have realised that women are still blocked from participating due to the patriarchal nature of our society. We would also want to begin to get women to engage-especially at grassroots level, in decision making processes, empowering their rights, get them to be active citizens and community advocates. So we are looking at really scaling up at least 3 programme lines in terms of women, youth and using arts and sports as a cutting methodology

Are there any specific events during the year that we should know about?
Definitely, we have more LLAP trainings in various communities, we will also celebrate International Days such as the International Human Rights Day, the Day of the African Child, the World Peace Day and World Anti Human Trafficking day. We will use the media especially broadcast media which is interactive and appeals to a wider audience because generally people don’t read much anymore. In some of these events we will meet people in their various communities and use entertainment with education to teach them about rights and development related issues. We have managed to reach a lot of communities and some of these, we have not been there for a while but they still can uphold themselves which is the point.

I noticed you guys have won a few awards?
Yes, we have won the National NGO Peace Award in 2013, we also won the NANGO Community Mobilisation Award in 2014 and also won an award offered by the Bulawayo Agenda. Those are the 3 awards we have won.
Is there anything you would like the public to know about the organisation?
First of all, we don’t give people houses or stands. We get a lot of people writing to us about such issues. We don’t give handouts! We believe in empowering the mind to empower the whole person to change the environment around them. We don’t give people hardware; we give them software. We are a Christian organisation with Christian beliefs, ethos and approach to do the work that we do. What sets us apart is the Christian ethos,theology and beliefs etc.

How would one get involved?
We have Friends of Habakkuk Trust and Umkhankaso Centre in which we encourage members to become a part of us. Umkhankaso Centre is a space where you can be able to book board room, have meetings, discussions on various social, economic issues. People can contact us whenever they have meetings and programmes. Last year we had a section on human trafficking and the tax on churches and we are planning to have these sections regularly. This year we are looking to talk about the traffic fine introduced by police and global issues such as the migration crisis.
Do you interact with schools?
We want to but we have not yet managed to do so. It is our desire to also reach out to schools and hopefully have advocacy clubs at schools.