Vision
“Transformed women and youth with sustainable livelihoods”
Mission
“SHDF is committed to transforming the lives of women and youth, promoting self-reliance through savings mobilisation, wealth creation, information sharing and capacity building using sustainable and inclusive development approaches as well as gender mainstreaming”.
Core Values
Self-reliance
Savings Philosophy
Transparency
Diversity
Innovation
Sustainability
WHO WE ARE
The Self Help Development Foundation (SHDF) works in the area of community development particularly in rural areas with a direct focus on building women’s capacities to become economically self-reliant. The organization was established in 1963 and has gone through continued re-focusing to remain relevant to its members and the operating environment.
SHDF is a capacity building institute with vast experience, expertise and capacity to assist persons of diverse backgrounds in very wide ranging subjects namely, strategic management for businesses, business management for farmers and small enterprises, financial mobilization for small enterprises, internal savings and lending, vocational skills development, and advisory services for agribusinesses. The institution provides various business development services to a varied target group, these include small and medium scale farmers, farmer associations, commodity associations, women’s clubs and associations, leaders of community projects, agro-dealers and communities at large. SHDF has a pool of highly qualified officers who are spread out throughout the country thereby allowing us to conduct several activities simultaneously.
As an organization we work hands on for the development of women and communities through the promotion of self-reliance. 80% of our members are in the rural areas, with 20% in the urban areas. Of the 20 000 club members, 97% are female.
Currently, our focus is on improving the viability of agriculture sector as a whole with a particular focus on increasing incomes from agriculture. To this end we are providing capacity building to various actors along different agricultural value chains, such as mentoring of agro-dealers, assisting agro-dealers in financial mobilization, training farmers in farming as a business, providing horticultural marketers with business management skills, securing business loans for farmers, promotion of food processing, output marketing, exposing processors of dried vegetables and fruits to regional export markets.
We are working in thirty districts of Zimbabwe and we have field officers working from each district. The districts that we are working in are; Chimanimani, Mutare, Buhera, Mutasa, Makoni, Nyanga, Wedza, Mutoko, Murewa, Goromonzi, Manyame/Seke, Guruve, Maowe, Bindura, Hurungwe, Zhombe, Shurugwi, Mvuma, Gokwe North, Chivi, Masvingo, Gweru, Tsholotsho, Lupane, Nkayi, Umzingwane, Gwanda, Bulilima, Harare and Bulawayo.
We have a very strong gender focus with a fully-fledged gender program and have mainstreamed issues around the gender, environment and natural resources management in all our activities.
OUR MAIN FOCUS AREA
The range of BDS provided includes demand driven tailor-made programs, to suit needs of beneficiaries. The programs currently available are Credit Management, Farming as a Family Business, Marketing of Horticultural Produce, Contract Farming, Agro-dealer Business Management, Entrepreneurship for the Manufacturing Industry, and Business Management. Participatory approaches and facilitation techniques are used to enhance processes.
In addition, coaching and mentoring is also used for enhanced capacity to build the entrepreneurs to become astute business people. This service is provided at enterprise level with assistance being given on the business premise from basics such as business planning, marketing, record keeping, customer care to issues such as drafting business plans, strategic planning for businesses, marketing analysis.
Advisory services for entrepreneurs on financial mobilization, micro-finance management, market linkages, drafting business plans are also available.
SHDF has in the past 3 years (2014 – 2017) built the capacity of 16, 897 entrepreneurs in Buhera and Seke districts in business management, enterprise development, financial literacy, adoption of appropriate technology (such as drip irrigation kits from GiZ for Buhera farmers), mobilization of savings. In addition over 12 commodity associations and savings credit associations were organized in these 2 districts. The program has improved the way SHDF members run their enterprises.
Women organized in savings clubs have a representative leadership structure that gives them the platform to participate in the planning, implementation and evaluation of activities in SHDF. The leaders are represented at Ward, District, Provincial and National level. The National level leaders also seat in all SHDF Board meetings and participate in making decisions regarding the governance of the organization. These women are targeted by this program to equip them to ably represent the concerns of their constituencies. A 3-day learning program in women’s rights, democracy, gender, advocacy and lobbying aimed at equipping women knowledge and skills is offered. Aspects of elections, constitution drafting are also part of the program. At the end of each an advocacy plan is developed and followed through so that women practically lobby and advocate for a particular issue affecting them.
The elections were successfully conducted for ward (6f per district) and district committees for Buhera, Zhombe and Seke. The 126 elected women leaders underwent training in leadership and induction in their terms of reerence and scope of work.
SHDF offers a wide range of vocational skills which are meant to provide women with the requisite expertise for production of various goods. The program covers (a) Textiles technology including making menstrual hygiene pads (b) Detergents manufacturing; (c) Handicrafts and fine arts; and (d) Agro-processing; among others.
The OD process led by SHDF will lead to improve any organization’s; farmers groups or associations/unions; women’s groups; agribusiness associations; capacity to handle its internal and external functioning and relationships. This would include such things as improved interpersonal and group processes, more effective communication, enhanced ability to cope with organizational problems of all kinds, more effective decision processes, more appropriate leadership style, improved skill in dealing with destructive conflict, and higher levels of trust and cooperation among organizational members.
Over the years SHDF has established well-rooted grassroots structures from village to national level that are now being used by other organizations to penetrate communities.
These structures continuously undergo programs on leadership as the ability to influence other to work towards achieving a shared vision. The process involves inspiring leaders to work together as a team that collectively makes decision on how things should happen in order to achieve a shared vision. The leadership program develops the analytical and advocacy capacity of leaders for effective pro-active advocacy. The leadership program covers aspects of leadership styles; structures; roles of leaders; how to elect leaders; succession planning; team building; constitution drafting; conflict resolution and peace building.
SHDF also has a program on gender and gender mainstreaming to address the environment in which gender policies and programs are developed and implemented. The program focuses on how to integrate gender concerns into programming and is accompanied by developing a strategy to ensure that the operating environment is gender-sensitive, guaranteeing equal opportunities and treatment to both men and women.the Gender program covers, what is gender; gender building blocks; gender division of labour; socialization; access and control; introducing gender; gender analysis; effective gender mainstreaming.
OUR CAPACITY
The capacity and expertise of SHDF is drawn from over 50 years of community work in business development services, vocational skills development and organizational development services. It is from this base that SHDF presents itself as a formidable capacity building institute that is able to provide tailor-made programs and project management services for other organizations throughout Zimbabwe.
In 2009 – 2010 SHDF was contracted to design and manage a project in managing a revolving fund on behalf of the British Embassy and the Mutare City Council. The project saw 75 former commercial sex workers receiving loans (total value of US$25,000-00) in the form of inputs for either a poultry or garment-making project. The project was successfully implemented and ended with the women securing 4,000sq. mtr of land from Mutare City Council to build permanent Poultry structures.
SHDF has successfully equipped over 800 farmers from Mrewa Agriculture under the RAIN-Zimbabwe project in Mrewa on “Farming as a Business” in November 2010. This process entailed developing of a Trainers manual, participant handouts in vernacular, training of the farmers using some of Mercy Corps record keeping and income statement formats and submitting a comprehensive report.
In addition, SHDF was contracted by SNV to mentor 60 Agro-dealers in Mashonaland West province for the period 1 February 2011 to 30 September 2012. The project entailed conducting of a gap analysis to audit on skills, systems and processes on all agro-dealers in the program; developing a capacity building plan for each agro-dealer that would use mentoring and coaching on retail business aspects; facilitating the agro-dealers to establish and adopt professional business systems; credit provision to both farmers and agro-dealers; creating market linkages for the agro-dealers; facilitate the establishment of output marketing arrangements; assisting agro-dealers to develop business plans.
SOS Bindura has previously engaged SHDF to assist its beneficiaries (30) in Savings Management, Group Management and Dynamics in 2010.
SHDF has partnered the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, European Union and British Embassy. SHDF has the staff with the required capacity, experience and expertise to successfully build capacity of any target group.
SHDF has worked with several partners such as USAID, CARE, GTZ, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Germany), Louvain Development (Belgium), European Commission, German Embassy, French Embassy, Japanese Embassy, British Embassy, to mention a few. These partnerships built capacity in SHDF to communicate and coordinate with funding partners, to meet contractual obligations, to maintain accurate project records and to manage project funds prudently.
SHDF has a qualified and competent fulltime staff compliment of 18 and community based volunteers at ward level known as ward facilitators. SHDF has offices at district level namely, Zhombe, Gwanda, Buhera and Seke. In addition there is a regional office in Bulawayo and the Head Office in Harare. See attached organogram for details.