At Kufunda we are experimenting with creating healthy vibrant communities, seeking to learn as much as possible about what it takes to create sustainable community. If you visit our centre you will quickly see the obvious manifestations: the permaculture gardens, the herb lab, the compost toilets, the eco buildings, the solar experiments, and more. A large part of our work is the work of learning more about sustainability in all its aspects – and sharing that with others, through programmes, visits, and shared learning. Please contact Ticha if you would like to set up a visit to Kufunda.

Our current work is focused on sustainable farming and land use, renewable energy and healthy living.

Our Sustainable Land Use intentions are:

• To work towards developing a fully organic farm that generates income and can be a demonstration centre in sustainable agriculture.
• To grow healthy food and medicinal herbs to feed and heal ourselves sustainably as a village.
• To introduce good nutrition through preparing and processing healthy food.
• To raise awareness of producing and eating healthy food.

We are currently working with local and international permaculture educators, and are planning a permaculture design course to be held at Kufunda later this year. Contact admire@kufunda.org for more information on how to join us in this work.

Our Healthy Living team is working in the area of using herbs and food as a way of staying healthy and disease free. The team is particularly interested in the challenges of people living with HIV/AIDS. They produce herbal remedies using organic locally grown herbs. Contact patricia@kufunda.org

In Eco-building Kufunda has over the years learnt how to build rammed earth buildings, cobb, compost toilets, and wood-saving stoves. We continue to be in learning and to share what we know with our community friends. Contact stephen@kufunda.org for more on our eco-building experiments.

Our Cleaner Earth enthusiasts are working on renewable energy. At this time it is primarily through a solarisation project that we fondly think of as our Solar Grandmother project. The goal of the project is to improve the livelihoods of rural communities, reduce environmental destruction and deforestation through the use of solar energy.  We seek to achieve this by having the communities themselves become fully involved in the process of fabricating and installing solar lighting units for about 200 households in 10 rural communities. Our solar ‘engineers’ are three Zimbabwean grandmothers – Gogos – from the Kufunda communities, who were funded to train in India. They returned to Zimbabwe in September 2011 after six months of learning. They returned with new knowledge, and the energy to utilise it. They are able to construct solar inverters (that invert solar energy to electricity), set up solar modules, and connect a full system to create power. We are currently waiting for solar materials to arrive by freight from India, after which the Gogos will be reaching out to ten rural communities (their own included) to teach and implement basis electrification systems. Email allan@kufunda.org for more on our cleaner earth and Solar Grandmother’s project.