Rume Rimwe Harikombi Churu – Impact trough Collaboration
By Trevor Molife – Purple Africa – Zimbabwe
“Rume rimwe harikombi churu” This is a famous proverb in my home language of Shona, the proverb is translated as, “A single person, no matter how big, does not encircle an anthill alone”. This is the same with social change and any kind of work that one needs to tackle with the hope of bringing about positive impact. Impact is almost impossible to achieve without working together with others.
This takes me back to the time after I had finished the kanthari course. Upon return to Zimbabwe, I was excited to kickstart Purple Hand Africa, realizing my dream to bring about a positive change for the LGBTQI+ community. My end goal was and still is to finally see the LGBTQI+ Zimbabweans becoming contributing citizens that can effect change in all strata of society. This felt like an uphill task I could not manage on my own without getting much engagement from the other organisations already working in the field or community members themselves.
I identify as a gay man and having a few friends that knew others was a good start, but not knowing what others where already doing was going to throw me into the red ocean. My worst fear was coming into the field replicating what was already being done by other activists and organisations, which at the end of the day yields competition instead of collaboration. Hence my first steps had me seeking partnerships with the likes of GALZ (An Association for LGBT people in Zimbabwe), Writers’ Cafe and Trans and Intersex Rising Zimbabwe (TIRZ). These organisations are more community orientated, which helped in getting participants for the project as well as getting a clearer idea of what was already happening on the ground and which gaps existed in service provision.
I am happy to have a backing of other kantharis. There is Gumisayi Bonzo who also runs an organisation that works with trans people in Zimbabwe, called TransSmart. And there is Arthanas, who despite not working with the community offered to come in as a facilitator for some of our sessions. These first steps helped in getting Purple Hand Africa to run its first successful Community Art Workshop. This was a fruitful step as it opened the doors for more partnerships that helped in seeing the project having a nationwide reach, towards covering the gap of mental wellness service provision for the LGBTQI+ community. The steps we could not have managed to walk if we had tried to do it on our own.
Through friendships built with allies from the mainstream community we expanded our activities to also include storytelling. This was after our interaction with Vera, who is the Community Manager of Moto Republik. She told us about their ZW9 Accelerator program, which we took our chance in applying for. These are some of the opportunities that would have fallen by our wayside if we had remained in our own shell. Succeeding in this application then helped us to kickstart our storytelling project which is giving power to LGBTQI+ people to own our narrative and have the power to tell our own stories in our own voices, moving away from others speaking on our behalf.
In these times of corona, life has changed from the normal. Funding streams have suddenly turned towards only providing for emergency relief. Big funders have also started giving more to coalitions as they tend to cover more gaps than organisations working in silos, hence in these times we need each other to encircle this anthill of covid.
In such times, collaborating with partnerships within mainstream non-profits has been of an immense assistance to us. This has been translated in our partnership with the likes of Dragonflies Everywhere who assists us with access to experts for program design and facilitation for our workshops with follow through one-on-one coaching support for participants in our programs. This has helped our participants to deal with the unique challenges encountered by a marginalised person during the lockdown. We also have a great network kantharis who are working on diverse issues, whom we continue to call upon for support and knowledge sharing where we might fall short. In these changing times I have learnt that collaborations bring about greater impact and change that is much needed in this world of social change.
During this collaboration jouney, Purple Hand Africa has gained a diverse group of participants in our projects, whose lives continue to be enriched uniquely and holistically through the diverse professionals we collaborate with. It is interesting how through this experience we have also been helped to design projects with an end to end impact and now we have even introduced Personal Development Plans for our participants who are bound to find relevant mentorship and follow through towards achieving their individual life goals from our large network of collaborators, which is continuing to grow.
The main takeaway is that we learnt that through collaboration one also grows in knowledge and can see gaps within the work they will be doing, as constantly there is need to transform yourselves with the changing times and needs. Through collaboration we are now assured of having long term and a wider spread impact that can help us towards achieving our baby steps in reaching the organisation’s ultimate vision of an inclusive Zimbabwe that embraces diversity.