Tendai Rupapa

ZIMBABWE celebrates Women’s Month with a lot to cheer about, thanks to interventions and programmes by First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa who is leaving no stone unturned to improve the health and welfare of womenfolk.

Amai Mnangagwa can be best described as an Angel of Hope who is touching lives or a star which shines brighter where there is darkness.

The First Lady has a passion for women and the girl child such that she is always keen to uplift areas that are looked down upon.

Women’s Month is celebrated the whole of March internationally to provide education on how women help shape the nation.

Yesterday, March 8 was International Women’s Day which commemorates the cultural and socio-economic achievements of women.

The day marks a call to a gender equal world — free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination and one that is diverse, equitable, inclusive while differences are valued and celebrated.

Since the Month of March celebrates achievements by women in various fields, it is critical to recognise Amai Mnangagwa among the country’s living heroines.

The assistance she has offered to women and girls of Zimbabwe is the first of its kind as it had never been witnessed since the attainment of independence in 1980 and the footprints are there for everyone to see.

She has opened windows of opportunities for women and girls worth celebrating.

A mother is not selective and embraces all her children thus her programmes and projects are non-partisan.

The mother of the nation — who is also the country’s health ambassador— has been traversing the length and breadth of the country addressing issues that affect mainly women and girls.

Through her Angel of Hope Foundation, she has done a lot of work to restore confidence in most people as she leads from the front in efforts to address poverty, diseases, gender-based violence, inheritance disputes and health issues among many others which mainly affect women and girls.

She has been fighting tooth and nail to ensure communities live in harmony through engaging men and women to highlight challenges that come up as a result of domestic violence.

She has also introduced a toll free line, 575, which is directly under her office to assist the victims of gender-based violence.

The First Lady is also working with relevant departments to ease the plight of widows and children who are often thrown out of homes and lose property following the death of the breadwinner.

The intervention on inheritance matters has highlighted abuse that widows were enduring at the hands of relatives of their deceased husbands. It was worse for childless widows who were made to leave matrimonial homes and rejoin their families empty-handed.

According to health experts, breast and cervical cancers constitute the most common cancers among women in sub-Saharan Africa. In Zimbabwe, cervical cancer accounts for more than a third of all cancers among women of African descent.

A recent study aimed at assessing breast and cervical cancer knowledge, attitudes and practices of women of reproductive age pointed to a lack of awareness and comprehensive knowledge about breast and cervical cancer.

It also revealed low self-risk perception, low uptake of cancer early detection services and low capacity of the local health institution in offering cancer services.

It was recommended that the scaling-up of cancer information, dissemination, and early detection services needed to be prioritised, including training of local health institutions.

In light of this, the First Lady has joined forces with health teams and is always deploying her Angel of Hope Foundation’s mobile clinic to all provinces and hard to reach areas to save the womenfolk who are being screened for cancer for free.

During the outreach programmes, she has been holding interactive sessions that allow women and girls to ask the health experts some questions necessary for their health.

During the sessions, she has highlighted the need for the citizenry to undergo regular health checks to ensure the diseases are diagnosed early and people are commenced early on treatment.

Chiweshe villagers are enjoying a new lease of life following the establishment of a health post offering outpatient, maternal and child health services by Amai Mnangagwa.

The facility could not have come at any better time as villagers narrated harrowing tales of how they lost their loved ones before reaching Rosa Hospital.

Plans are afoot to build a waiting shelter for expectant mothers, amid reports that some women were giving birth in forests while on their way to the hospital.

Amai Mnangagwa built the facility from her personal savings.

The First Lady has also been holding Gota/Nhanga/Ixhiba sessions to equip young girls and boys with critical information to grow into responsible adults.

She has actively used the sessions to empower girls with information necessary to curb the surge in teen pregnancies, child marriages and drug abuse which is affecting both girls and boys.

She has also been meeting with teenage mothers from across the country as she considered how best she could extricate them from poverty and empower them through self-help projects.

As the nation celebrates Women’s month, the First Lady has moved in to remove former ladies of the night from the streets and started income generating projects for them to earn clean money and raise their families in a dignified manner.

She has acquired a farm in Mashonaland East Province where she is empowering beneficiaries who include former ladies of the night, the disabled, youths and widows with seed and technical support to attain high yields.

This project is being replicated across all the country’s provinces.

Amai Mnangagwa is not giving the women of Zimbabwe a fish, instead she is teaching them how to catch a fish.

She has come in handy to vulnerable women countrywide through the partnership between Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) and her Angel of Hope Foundation which is affording residents a rare opportunity to acquire self-help skills from the university free of charge as part of her multi-pronged empowerment initiatives.

She has also been providing young women and girls with sewing machines and other consumables to sew reusable sanitary pads for onward distribution to the less priviledged.

Apart from equipping the beneficiaries with sewing skills, the First Lady’s intervention goes a long way in improving menstrual hygiene.

This comes at a time when some women were reportedly using cow dung and some leaves during their menstrual cycles which exposed them to rash.

Some girls in poor communities missed school during their cycles owing to the lack of menstrual pads, hence the importance of the First Lady’s interventions.

As the nation celebrates Women’s Month, it is also essential to note that the First Lady has given women and girls a chance to smile after celebrating their successes in various fields.

She celebrated the Air Force of Zimbabwe pilot Gamuchirai Mbigi who made history by becoming the first woman cadet to be given a sword of honour after coming out tops in her flying class.

Only recently, she also held a dinner to celebrate the achievements of Ranger Rosemary Kateguru (25) from Kanyemba, Doma community, who made history by becoming the country’s first female qualified holder of the Launch-master Class One licence to operate big boats and vessels on Zimbabwean waters, as she encourages the girl-child to work hard and unleash her full potential.

Still on the Kanyemba community, after living for long as outright beggars with no means to sustain themselves and their families, women in Kanyemba’s Doma community are now learning to work on their own to generate income, thanks to the First Lady’s intervention through castor bean production, gardening, sewing and knitting projects, among others.

The First Lady, who has been spearheading the transformation of the previously marginalised community, provided the community through her Angel of Hope Foundation, with expertise, crochets, sewing machines and the material needed to keep the projects running.

Amai Mnangagwa has towered high in providing meals for children in deprived communities countrywide, in the process rescuing thousands of women who were struggling to put food on the table for their children.

She has also ended tales of children dropping out of school owing to poverty and hunger.

Zimbabwe is blessed to have a First Lady who is hands-on and takes it upon herself to ensure every citizen has access to food, shelter, education and healthcare.

Through her Angel of Hope Foundation, she has turned people’s despair to hope.