Bahá’í World/Volume 25/The William Masetlha Foundation, Zambia

Bahá’í World/Volume 25 The William Masetlha Foundation, Zambia

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[Page 221]

PROFILE: THE WILLIAM MASETLHA FOUNDATION, ZAMBIA

anani has taught me to be true to myself." "Spending my last appreciate the virtues I have been taught and the good days I had here." "One thing I like about Banani is that I found out who I really am and what I want to become... I'm sure if given the chance I will be able to help change the world to make it a better place to live in."""Let your vision be world embracing.""

These comments, written in the school's first yearbook by mem- bers of the 1996 graduating class of the Banani International Secondary School in the Chisamba district of Zambia, clearly reflect the ideals of the institution, which opened in 1993 to provide secondary education for young women.

The Banani School forms one part of the William Mmutle Masetlha Foundation, a Bahá’í agency founded in 1995 under the direction of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Zambia, which aims to deepen individuals' knowledge of spiritual principles and to provide training in health, literacy, and a range of practical skills and trades. In addition to overseeing the operations of the Banani School, the Foundation has responsibility for the [Page 222]direction of the William Mmutle Masetlha Institute, dedicated to the development of human resources in Zambia.

The development of the Masetlha Foundation shows how the expansion of grassroots development activities leads to a natural evolution of established structures, governed by the needs and priorities of the people they serve. The Bahá’í approach to social and economic development is distinctive, in that it promotes a dynamic coherence between the spiritual and practical elements of life. People learn to apply spiritual principles, to behave uprightly, and to practice the art of Bahá’í consultation so that they can become increasingly self-sufficient and self-reliant. Further, projects arise from an expressed need from people at the grass-roots level rather than being imposed from the top. The basic principle is that all people, regardless of their circumstances or resources, can participate in this joint enterprise of increasing the systematic application of the principles of the Bahá’í Faith to improving the quality of human life.

This approach recognizes that as people develop their capacity to make decisions about their spiritual and material progress and then to implement those decisions, the level at which they operate will become increasingly complex. The growth in complexity, however, is not imposed from without but arises naturally from the growth in capacity of those participating in the projects. 1

The William Masetlha Institute

This kind of growth can clearly be seen in the development of the Masetlha Foundation, which has its roots in the founding of the William Masetlha Institute in 1983. The Institute was originally established to work towards the betterment of life among the 50,000 people that constitute the rural population in the Kabwe district, eighty kilometers north of Zambia's capital, Lusaka. The Institute sought to develop human resources through combining a study program in the Bahá’í teachings and service to the Bahá’í Faith with vocational training in rural technology, farming, food production, arts and crafts, health and hygiene, and other practical

1. See also pp. 293-302 for further a report on two Bahá’í social and economic development projects, including the William Masetlha Foundation. [Page 223]

THE WILLIAM MASETLHA FOUNDATION

skills. In this way, the people would be able to see the spiritual principles involved in their work.

In accordance with the Bahá’í teachings, the promotion of the advancement of women has occupied the Masetlha Institute since its early days. In 1987, a program for women was created which included components on spiritual enrichment, literacy and numeracy, mothering skills, and agricultural training. More recently, the establishment of the Banani Secondary School for girls has reinforced the Bahá’í commitment to the spiritual principle of equality.

An important element in the success of any program is reinforcement of learned information and behavior. One effective way in which such reinforcement is achieved is through the publication of a newsletter which was begun by the Institute so that former participants in the programs could continue to stay in contact with each other and develop effective networks to reinforce their newly acquired skills and knowledge.

Surveying the conditions of the area, the Institute eventually developed two main projects, the first addressing an illiteracy rate that runs as high as sixty percent and the second with the goal of improving grassroots knowledge about health care in the villages of the area. Thus, the Bahá’í Literacy Campaign and the Bahá’í Primary Health Care Project were born.

The Bahá’í Literacy Campaign

The Bahá’í Literacy Campaign is another example of how a simple project begun at the grassroots level can evolve to become more complex. The first stage in this process was a Bahá’í literacy project, which was begun by the Masetlha Institute in the early 1990s. Its object was to train some 200 tutors who would then each hold literacy classes for approximately twenty students. After the conclusion of the initial effort, the Zambian Bahá’í community became part of a Bahá’í Literacy Campaign coordinated by the Office of Social and Economic Development at the Bahá’í World Centre in 1996.

The Campaign had begun as a pilot project in three countries—Cambodia, the Central African Republic, and Guyana—in 1994. By 1996, enough had been learned from the pilot project for its expansion into seven additional countries: Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malaysia, Panama, Thailand, and Zambia. [Page 224]The twin objectives of the campaign are to improve literacy standards within the Zambian Bahá’í community and to endow participants with the power to communicate in such a way that they can shape their own destiny. This is achieved not merely through functional literacy but by giving people access to the Word of God and means to apply that Word in their lives. Thus, while focusing particularly on women and youth, the literacy project seeks to educate entire villages in concert with efforts to improve their social conditions. The first, year-long phase of the campaign includes the development of a core curriculum, the training of facilitators and trainers of facilitators, and the establishment of a number of literacy classes throughout the region. In line with the approach to development described above, subsequent developments built upon results and findings from this initial phase.

The Primary Health Care Project

Intended to assist the Government of Zambia in its campaign to achieve "Health for All by the Year 2000," the Bahá’í Primary Health Care Project began in August 1993. Its goals are to identify and train over a hundred Community Health Care Workers to actively promote preventive health education methods in their own communities. On a broader level, the project provides a health education training model that can be made available to other development agencies. Other goals include an increase of ten percent in the level of immunization coverage in targeted areas and an increase in knowledge of primary health care, with an emphasis on AIDS and malaria prevention. The key to achieving this final goal is the integration of primary health care into a broad range of development-related training programs. By 1995, more than 70 of 93 trained community health workers had conducted health education activities; by the end of 1996, 149 had been trained.

The encouraging results of the training program are seen in the following comments of Kate Bwalya, a public health nurse for Zambia's Ministry of Health. She notes that health workers "willingly volunteer to get trained, but they are not wholeheartedly prepared to serve. They need something to sustain their zeal. They don't seem to know who they are really serving. But the Bahá’í-trained health educators know that they are serving. And [Page 225]from what I see, the difference...is the spiritual stand." Indeed, the emphasis on service is a prime objective of the program.

The future development of the primary health care project is currently under consideration, but certainly consolidation of gains made is one priority. Refresher courses for workers already trained, as well as courses for new workers to replace those who are no longer active, community education, and the training of village health committees are ways in which the project may evolve.

The Banani International Secondary School

Since its opening in January 1993, the Banani School has undergone steady growth and progress. In 1996, for example, a new library, computer lab and swimming pool were opened, and the academic success of the school was reflected in the fact that all of the members of the senior class earned their International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) according to the standards of the University of Cambridge Examinations Syndicate, while the grade nine class rated second in the district for its passing rate.

In 1994, more than 90 students attended the school, while that number expanded to some 116 girls in the five grades during 1996. From an academic staff of eleven hailing from six countries in 1994, Banani grew to some seventeen teachers and administrators, as well as other support staff, in 1996.

Subjects offered include English as a second language, French, mathematics, geography, history, English literature, agriculture, biology, chemistry, and physics. Courses on world religions and character development have been developed by the school, and a community service program is a key element in the moral training received by students. In this program, students work in groups, with a teacher advisor, and offer different forms of social service to the school and the surrounding community. Scholarships for deserving students have been offered since 1993.

Conclusion

The genesis, evolution, and future prospects of the Masetlha Foundation have been dictated by the needs of the people in the area it serves. The challenge taken up by this Bahá’í agency is to channel energy into the most effective means of meeting those needs. As people gain experience and expertise in the process of applying [Page 226]Parents, students, and guests celebrate the inauguration of the Banani School for Girls.

A dance by a group of students, featured in the opening ceremonies of the Banani School.

spiritual principles to promote their own social well-being, there is no doubt that the Foundation will evolve further, guided by the belief that "the training that can make it possible for the earth's inhabitants to participate in the production of wealth will advance the aims of development only to the extent that such an impulse is illumined by the spiritual insight that service to humankind is the purpose of both individual life and social organizations."2 Only through this kind of training can development efforts succeed in "equipping people and institutions with the means through which they can achieve the real purpose of development: that is, laying foundations for a new social order than can cultivate the limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness."3

2. From a statement of the Bahá’í International Community's Office of Public Information, The Prosperity of Humankind, originally prepared for the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, March 1995, pp. 12-13. See also The Bahá’í World 1994-95, pp. 273-296 for the full text of this statement. 3. Ibid., p. 13.