The Story of Tsuro

THE STORY OF TSURO

TSURO’s birthplace – Chikukwa

The Chimanimani hare, TSURO, an indicator of diversity and health in the natural resources and a symbol of wisdom in the face of adversity in human folklore, began its life as a young hare in the foothills of the Chimanimani Mountains in the Chikukwa Communal Land.

In the early 1990s, the people of Chikukwa, having watched the devastating effects of a particularly heavy storm on their soil, decided to do something as a community about management of their natural resources. Slowly but surely, through group and individual efforts, they began to manage their resources more sustainably. And slowly but surely their landscape began to change. From a landscape that was starting to degrade quite quickly it became one that was improving. This was a remarkable feat in a country where almost everywhere landscapes are degrading at varying rates. Springs that had dried up reappeared, their crystal clear, life-giving water a fitting indicator of the changes that the Chikukwa community had brought to their small corner of Chimanimani district.

Behind what happened in Chikukwa lay the support of its leadership, particularly the traditional leaders. As custodians of the natural resources, they recognised the strength of the process that was happening and its links to keeping alive many aspects of a traditional way of life. They shared their experiences with other traditional leaders in Chimanimani District. Furthermore, through the Chikukwa Permaculture Centre, many visitors came to Chikukwa, including those from other parts of Chimanimani District. All this led to a growing interest to share the experiences of Chikukwa further afield. In 1999, a variety of individuals and stakeholders, including the Chimanimani Conservation Committee, began to design a programme under the name TSURO: Towards Sustainable Use of Resources Organisation. Contacts with ITDG led to the support of this programme by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as from December 1999.The young hare was ready to set out on an adventurous journey into the district.

2000 - Reaching out to the wider district

In 2000 a small team of Antonetta Takawira, Ulrich Westermann and Alias Mulambo launched the TSURO initiative with the aim “to strengthen the capacity of rural communities in Chimanimani District to sustain their resource base through ecological land use management”. They responded to letters of request for assistance??. Although these were coming from different parts of the district, they decided to focus initially on three wards.

Working closely with the traditional leadership, the team conducted a number of two-day awareness sessions in which they introduced TSURO and its approach. Groups began to put in proposals to the team, to build a dam, for example, or to fence a garden. Individuals began to apply what they had learnt in the introductory training sessions to their own gardens, fields and homesteads. At the same time farmers went on exchange visits to Chikukwa to learn directly from the residents about how they had been managing their resources. Some farmers also visited Nyahode Union Learning Centre to learn more specifically about water harvesting techniques.

TSURO had what it called the three-legged pot approach. The three legs were: training, establishment of on the ground projects and organisational development.

Word of mouth, or was it the TSURO News that was published from time to time, spread word of the young TSURO’s activities. Demand for its services grew. One of the basic values of the founding team was that of “justice” and in the light of this value they decided that the programme should aim to cover the whole district. The hare was now fully-grown and ready to take on the world.

2001 - The Big Launch

In September 2001 TSURO held a conference that was pivotal in its history. This meeting brought together representatives from 21 out of the 23 wards of Chimanimani and launched the TSURO Association. The representatives at the conference elected a management committee that was the forerunner of a District Board. A number of traditional leaders attended the conference and blessed it with traditional rites. Appropriately, the Chikukwa Permaculture Centre hosted the 2001 conference where delegates formed a vision for their district. They urged that TSURO should look beyond permaculture/sustainable agriculture practices to include processing and marketing of agricultural products and issues relating to health and nutrition.

2002 - Strategic Planning

2002 was a year of strategic planning and expansion for TSURO. There now was demand for the wise hare in all corners of the district. 132 village groups joined the newly founded TSURO dzeChimanimani Association and came to be known as TSURO Village Groups or TVGs in the TSURO lingo. The TSURO board became active taking over the policy-making role for the organisation, which up until then had been in the hands of the founding team of three. Very sadly one member of this pioneer team, Antonetta Takawira, died unexpectedly in mid-2002. It was a sad chapter in the TSURO journey.

Having set its own course,TSURO was now ready to engage other stakeholders, confident that they would not dominate. A variety of stakeholders and TSURO representatives participated in strategic planning workshops for what had become their three areas of focus: sustainable agriculture and natural resource management, community based agro-processing and marketing, and community health and nutrition. From now on TSURO would strive to work closely with other players in the development field. Also in 2002, TSURO carried out a district wide survey into marketing issues.

On the financial support front, Kellogg had continued to fund TSURO and by 2002 GTZ was supporting some initial work to promote the Zunde raMambo concept. EED funded some of the strategic planning, with bigger support in mind. WFD also came in with small support, looking forward to being able to work with TSURO on a longer-term programme. VeCO backed some experimentation work with farmers. TSURO had a healthily diverse funding base, from Kellogg with 45% of the funds to VeCO with 7%.

In 2002 the number of staff expanded rapidly. TSURO recruited a community facilitator from each of the 21 wards in which it was working. The process followed a combination of election and selection. Firstly, the wards elected a number of people who they felt would make good facilitators from their ward. Then a selection panel made up of TSURO board and staff members interviewed and selected who they felt to be the most appropriate. The staff went from three to 27 in 2002. The hare was now bounding to all corners of the district.

After much consultation in October 2002, the Board adopted the TSURO dzeChimanimani constitution. Board committees came into play, covering the areas of staffing, policy, training, finance, and projects. During all this time TSURO had been learning about working in a politically volatile district and came out clearly with a non-partisan approach to its work, which it worked hard to enshrine. Despite this not being easy, TSURO has contributed significantly to reducing divisions within communities, helping people to see the separation of party politics and development work.

2003 – TSURO reaches out far and wide

2003 saw a big increase in sustainable agriculture and natural resource management project activities. TSURO divides these projects into two broad categories: group projects which request material support from TSURO and family projects which do not receive any material support from TSURO. The group projects increased from 16 to 48 in 2003 and the family projects from 267 to 1194. Four of the five donors mentioned above continued their support of TSURO, with EED now providing 50%, Kellogg 29%, GTZ 12%, VeCO 6% and TSURO raising 3% itself.

In 2003 TSURO held its first AGM in Biriiri and appointed its first Executive Director from its board to ensure a close link between the management team and the board. The staff compliment grew from 27 to 32.

Launching the Health and Marketing Components

Early in 2004 the manager for the Community Health and Nutrition component began her work and launched programmes on HIV/AIDS awareness, peer education, nutrition gardens, home design for better sanitation, and toilet construction.

In the same year TSURO recruited members of staff for its Community based agro processing and marketing component. This included a manager, one officer in charge of each of three depots (one each in Chimanimani, Nhedziwa and Nyanyadzi), twelve security guards and a security officer. TSURO had also acquired a company called TECMIZ off the shelf. It was TECMIZ that bought the office and depot in Chimanimani. The aim was to keep the commercial activities of marketing separate from donor funded work. The marketing department pursued a number of directions: for example, training of marketing representatives from the ward committees in marketing skills and construction of solar driers, buying and selling of honey and beans, facilitating a contract between National Breweries and 120 farmers to grow red sorghum,

2004 - Funding Setback

TSURO had a major funding setback early in 2004 when the German Government refused to support the WFD application for funding of the sustainable agriculture and natural resource management component. They based this decision on allegations that TSURO slanted its support towards ZANU-PF members. This followed earlier allegations by some other people that TSURO oriented itself towards the MDC. It couldn’t win either way! Fortunately for TSURO, EED had become an enthusiastic backer of its work and in 2004 EED provided over 95% of its funds.

While marketing and health activities increased substantially during the year, the number of projects falling under sustainable agriculture and NRM stayed about the same as in 2003. This was partly due to lack of funding and to difficulty in finding someone to manage that department. It was also no doubt due to community facilitators having to spend substantially more time on activities relating to the two new components. This component continued its experimentation work with 40 farmers from 7 wards. There was also enthusiastic participation in three seed fairs.

2005 - in the vein of 2004

2005 continued very much in the vein of 2004. EED was now TSURO’s only donor, t a substantial and supportive one. TSURO held its third AGM in April 2005 at which around 150 representatives from member TVGs participated, slightly down from the second AGM where there were around 180 representatives. One setback early in 2005 was the government turning down registration of TSURO under the PVO Act, citing duplication of government efforts – AREX and the Ministry of Health. Given the strong support of all the local agencies, including Government ministries, the District Administrator and the Rural District Council, TSURO still hoped that the appeal process would see TSURO’ s registration taking place in the near future.

2006 - a new beginning starting from the villages

By mid 2006, TSURO made a breakthrough in improving its funding base. The German Embassy in Harare had revised its previous reservations and recommended TSURO’s contribution to peace and development in Chimanimani. After the green light by the German Government, WFD began to support the component of Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management. EED continued funding the components Community Health and Community Based Marketing and Agro-processing, entering a second phase of cooperation in January 2007. This meant substantial funding for all aspects of sustainable community programmes, secured up to the end of 2009.

The second half of 2006 was marked by a clear boost of confidence within TSURO. An extensive village based planning exercise was undertaken in all the member villages of the District. TSURO was now able to use this comprehensive data to include community needs and aspirations into its annual planning and review exercises. Learning from the observations and recommendations of the 2005 evaluation, TSURO staff and members took several months of reflection on issues like voluntarism, Board capacity building, organisational strengthening and people centred development. The department of Sustainable Agriculture resumed its original role of being TSURO’s core business’, around which other programme components such as health and marketing were defined. TSURO members at grassroots level became more active again and staff motivation improved with talk of ‘a new chapter’ going round. By the end of 2006, an annual plan had been produced that was promising a well integrated and effective programme implementation for the year to come.

2007 – organisational changes and external challenges

The Association’s internal elections to the committees at village and ward level were held between January and March, and elections to the Board at the AGM in April. These elections were exemplary of rural grassroots democracy. Voters and candidates displayed a mature behaviour in terms of transparency and tolerance which gave a boost to community empowerment. TSURO members proved that they are mature enough to deal with changes in the leadership of the organisation based on democratic processes.

Within TSURO staff, 2007 also saw changes in the personnel structure and relations. A new marketing manager and new officers in Health and SA/NRM were employed. This brought about some friction and several team building exercises had to be conducted to create productive staff relations. New facilitation strategies were introduced, moving from ward representation towards cluster facilitation. Community Facilitators would now work as small teams and specialise according to their individual areas of interest and skill. Cluster training events were carried out that combined the three components, working towards a holistic programmatic approach towards community facilitation. The transition to cluster facilitation proved to be a longer process that needed regular communication and staff development exercises. By the end of the year, however, the roles of elected TSURO Representatives and those of employed Facilitators had emerged much clearer than before.

The year 2007 saw an unprecedented melt down of the Zimbabwean economy characterised by hyperinflation, shortage of basic commodities, parallel market activities and unpredictable monetary policies. TSURO management managed to cushion employees’ welfare through flexible personnel policies while maintaining a strictly legal administrative approach. Programmes were implemented against the odds, but spending was well below the budget available. The finance department was under strong pressure from all sides – donors, managers and beneficiaries at community level. Nevertheless, TSURO continued to deliver according to its objectives unlike many other stakeholders both within Government and civil society.

2008 – a most difficult year for Zimbabwe

The political crisis in Zimbabwe provided for extraordinary challenges during this year. In the process before and after the March elections, TSURO programmes could only be implemented on a ‘low profile’ level although project activities within the villages continued. The ministerial suspension of all NGO field operations was only lifted in August. After that, TSURO activities resurged with astonishing vigour. A point in case was the successful implementation of an OPV seed saving and small grain programme that substantially contributed to food security in the District in the face of a critical shortage of seed before the rainy season. In the community health sector, Best Village Health competitions were held very successfully, promoting a wide variety of rural health aspects.

The hyperinflationary situation reached new world records towards the end of the year which posed extraordinary challenges for TSURO’s financial management and reporting. During the course of the year there was a total of 22 school days – a lost year for Zimbabwean students. The general collapse of the public health system also brought about a serious outbreak of cholera which affected TSURO programme activities during the last month of the year.

2009 – a new operational environment

At the beginning of the year, the Zimbabwean situation was characterised by wide spread hopelessness, acute food shortages, an escalating cholera epidemic and a general collapse of public services. TSURO took the challenges head-on, contributing substantially to the joint effort of District stakeholders to combat the cholera outbreak. With the introduction of the American Dollar as national legal tender and the formation of a Government of National Unity in March, the operational environment began to improve. In June, TSURO recruited a new Finance Manager, whose main task was to consolidate financial administration and reporting towards the end of the three years EED/WFD project phase. A planned extension of the WFD project phase to the end of 2010 was rejected by the new German Government, testing TSURO’ s flexibility once again.

In September, The TSURO Trust was finally registered, ending several years of legal uncertainty. The first district wide Permaculture design competition was held and a delegation of the International Permaculture Conference in Malawi visited the District. In December the new Marketing & Information Centre in Nyanyadzi was officially opened by a member of the EED Board.

2010 – Focus on village based project planning & implementation

With the support of the Japanese Embassy, TSURO made an effort to focus on one specific ward, Chakohwa. The process was planned and implemented in a very participatory manner, with maximum involvement of the rural community in resource planning and project implementation. The outcome has been a closely knit web of Permaculture projects that has visibly changed the livelihoods in Chakohwa.