Bakashana
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Mission Statement
Bakashana inspires Zambian women and girls by providing them a future of choice through education, access to health services, livelihood training, leadership mentoring, and cultural exchange. We envision a world of women and girls living as progressive, self-confident and socially involved leaders of a changing and more equitable world.
About This Cause
By embracing a strength-based, culturally relevant approach that combines ancestral wisdom, the cultivation of healthy relationships, & access to contemporary resources, Bakashana empowers young women to become leaders in their communities. Bakashana has formed many partnerships and collaborations in our time working in Kasama. Currently, we have the following projects on-going: • Supporting women and/or adolescent girls’ education (Our Scholarship and Supplementary Curriculum Programs, and Resource Centre): In 8 years since Bakashana began as a scholarship program, we have provided all school expenses/supplies to more than 100 financially impoverished and academically gifted girls. 99 percent of these girls have completed school, avoiding early pregnancy and marriage. All have been trained through extra-curricular courses focusing on gender equity and empowerment. Graduates have gone to the University of Zambia, teacher training and other colleges, and to become founders and teachers at local community schools. • Providing access to sexual/reproductive health rights: Over the last three years and in coordination with MTV Staying Alive Founation, the Zambian Ministry of Health (MOH), and our local partner Kasama Arts Theatre, we offer Voluntary Care and Testing (VCT) and HIV/AIDs sensitization and outreach through the form of dance, dram, and football. To date we have provided HIV/AIDS training, sensitization, and condoms to more than 12,000 youth in more than 27 rural communities surrounding Kasama. • Challenging negative cultural attitudes and practices: With assistance from MTV SAF, we have since 2016, been working with female traditional initiators/marriage counsellors ('Banachimbusa') to incorporate relevant health messaging into their cultural rites. This program has trained 72 traditional marriage counsellors in best-practices regarding HIV/AIDs transmission and positive living, and has reached (indirectly) more than 1,000 young women. • Providing economic empowerment training (without capital inputs) in the form of organic farming/business skills training: In partnership with LUSH, we have, over the last two years, trained more than 50 subsistence farmers in sustainable gardening techniques, focusing on organic farming, financial planning, and marketing. • Providing free adult education classes, including Computer Training, English, Literacy, and Art Since 2015, we have offered free computer training to more than 300 youth in Kasama through our Resource Centre, which serves as an office and centre for youth to access free education, a library, condoms, and personal/sexual health information. More than 43 women this year have taken advantage of our free English and literacy classes. We host club meetings for Girls and Boys leadership clubs for local youth weekly and discuss lifeskills topics. In Zambia, 60 percent of people live below the poverty line and 42 percent are classified as ‘extremely poor.’ Poverty rates are highest for female-headed households, with extreme poverty levels of more than 60 percent. Furthermore, poverty is worst in rural Zambia, where 83 percent of people live below the poverty line. Our country’s land-locked isolation limits access to markets and technical training/ skills, which hurts our economy and contributes to poverty. This challenge of lack of access to market has a double-negative effect: goods are more expensive, and harder to export. Many women in our community lack the knowledge and authority to pursue family planning options. The average family size here in Northern Province is 5.8 people per household. Effective use of family planning reduces health risks for women and gives them more control over their (reproductive) lives. With better health and greater control over their lives, women can take advantage of education, employment and civic opportunities. Families with fewer children are often able to send them to school, so girls get a chance to attain higher education. Poverty combined with a large family size contributes as well to high rates of gender-based violence. In a recent survey, a staggering 43 percent of married women reported having experienced some form of physical or sexual violence from their husbands or intimate partners in the year preceding the survey. Through all of this hardship, somehow illustrated here through difficult to empathize-with numbers, we are continually inspired by the tenacity of women in our community; -our spirit-Grandmothers, soul-Sisters, and heart-Aunties- their ability to overcome, their determination to live in love, and to willingness to work tirelessly to support themselves and their families. Bakashana seeks funding from Go. Go Love Foundation to offer a select group of these women a chance to completely transform their lives and the lives of their extended families. Our organization is uniquely positioned to implement this work. As a small, female-led, grass-roots, community-based organization, we have -since 2010- worked with individuals, traditional leaders, local gover