Advantage Africa and SPAU have been working with the Muzinda Single Parents’ Group since 2007. The group undertook successful income-generating activities including poultry-rearing and baking. With a large, industrial oven they were able to produce delicious cakes, biscuits and bread which sold well in the local markets. In 2009/2010 the bakery activities stalled because of the rising cost of flour and other ingredients which cancelled out any profit.

In 2010, the group’s activities were reviewed and many new members joined. Following livestock management training, twenty-five single parents started poultry and pig-raising activities. These have been an enormous success and continue to raise an income and provide invaluable nutrition for some of the most marginalised families in the area.

In Muzinda, Advantage Africa and SPAU also helped to establish a comfortable foster home for twenty orphans under the care of inspirational house mother Betty. The older children help to look after the younger ones and all contribute to the sense of one large, mutually supportive family.  Ella says:

I'm so happy because we younger girls now have a room of our own!

She and the other orphaned children are no longer at risk from the respiratory and skin diseases that beset the children in the unsanitary and unsafe conditions where they previously lived. Betty raises poultry and works as a midwife to help meet the children’s daily needs.