By Patricia Mashiri
The Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe (LCDZ) has donated a Toyota landcruiser vehicle to Nzeve Deaf Centre in Mutare. The donation follows the project by LCDZ of purchasing vehicles and giving them away to to community rehabilitation of people with disabilities (PWDs).
Greaterman Chivandire, the LCDZ Director said the donation was part of their work as the mother board of all community based rehabilitation centres.
“This is a project we are doing for all our rehabilitation centres. We are giving away vehicles to the PWDs services organisations which are attached to us under the child empowerment initiative.
“So far we have 32 active community based partners in the 10 provinces of the country with close to 1 500 disabled children.These partners give paramedical surgeries, livelihood support, corrective surgeries and social participation among others,”Chivandire said.
LCDZ believes the donated vehicle will help to improve livelihoods in Mutare as more outreach programmes will be done. The implimentated programmes will be monitored easily as travel hassles will be reduced, thereby reaching out to many people to teach them about the plight of deaf people.
In her acceptance speech, Libby Foster, the Director of Nzeve Deaf Centre said she was gratefull to receive such a big and nice vehicle as it would ease their work in reaching out to the community.
“I’m very delighted to receive this car for the deaf awareness community outreach. With this vehicle we can travel with our team, district officers and even parents of the children with hearing impairments to different areas.
“Our work has been made easier by LCDZ. We are a non profit organisation which loves to spread the word about the plight of the hearing impaired,” Foster said.
The LCDZ is well known for its livelihood projects for the PWDs. These tomato and cucumber farming using organic methods as well as fish farming. These projects are really helping in improving the welfare of the PWDs.
This year they are expecting to give away a total of seven vehicles to their child empowering partners. Last year, LCDZ donated two vehicles and is expecting to reach out to all the provinces they are operating in.