Founder

The Founder of Shekinah Glory Organization and Shekinah Glory Children’s Home and Skills Training Center is Juliet Bvekwa. She was born in December 1980 and raised in the same district of Zvishavane. Juliet has been working in the Humanitarian field since when she was 20 years old and has worked with various International NGOs in a number of countries such as Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Juliet lost her Mum at 18 and her Dad at 24 leaving her as legal guardian to her 5 siblings. Before establishing Shekinah Glory Organization, Juliet is known for randomly helping people around and not only from the community she comes from. Her commitment to serve the community of Zvishavane stems from her love for humanity and to make the world a better place. How else do we start than start from home – charity begins at home.

Organization Background

Shekinah Glory Organization was established in July 2016 in Zvishavane District in Zimbabwe. It comprises of Shekinah Glory Organization a registered Private Voluntary Organization; Shekinah Glory Children’s Home and Shekinah Glory Children’s Home Skills Training Center. Shekinah currently employs 13 full time paid staff and also offers volunteer opportunities across its areas of implementation. Shekinah is currently implementing projects in rural and urban Zvishavane District.

Our Projects

Shekinah Glory Children’s Home

This is the first and only Children’s Home to be ever setup in Zvishavane District, The Home was opened on 1 May 2017. The Home works closely with the Department of Social Welfare which identifies children for short term stay and Institution Care. All Children who arrive at Shekinah despite their length of stay receive a personalized health kit of new items comprising a toothbrush, towel, a pair of slippers and some underwear. All the children that we have received since we started always come without any extra pair of clothes. The community of Zvishavane has been contributing to this cause by donating used clothes and sometimes we also get food donations for the home.

The vegetables that are consumed at the Children’s Home are grown at the home where there is a small garden and excess produce is sold to the community. The Home also does poultry and sell eggs and chickens beyond their consumption requirement. The Homes also has sheep and goats that provide meat for the children. A few consumables such as washing powder, laundry soap, petroleum jelly and floor polish is made at the Home for their own use whilst the ingredients are sourced from nearby cities.

 Shekinah Glory Children’s Home Skills Training Center

The skills training center opened its doors to the first group of 19 trainees on 14 February 2022. The Center is a boarding facility and Trainees are provided with everything for the 4 months duration of their training at no cost such as accommodation, food, toiletries and in some cases we have to distribute clothes and shoes to critical cases. The main courses being offered are Sewing, Knitting, Carpentry and Welding. This center targets children from Shekinah Glory Children’s Home and provides them with a skill outside their academic education and despite how academically intelligent they are. We also consider vulnerable young people from Zvishavane district rural and urban areas who have never been to school or they dropped out of school for various reasons. We also prioritize young people from our Ndine Hanya Project, (a project for children living with HIV and Aids)

At the end of the training period Shekinah then sells products that were made during the course of the training to be able to buy material for the next group of trainees and also to service tools and equipment.

Sponsor a Child’s Education

Whilst most organizations support education prioritizing those with the best grades, Shekinah focuses on providing access to education for those who cannot afford. Our hope is for the vulnerable to be able to write their names and read the most basic of words. This project supports vulnerable children with school fees, uniforms and school stationary. Currently, we are supporting 60 children with school fees support from Pre school to University. We already have one student who graduated at xxx University in 2020 and currently works for Shekinah as a Program Coordinator as his degree program was Developed Studies. He is now studying his Masters’ Degree and paying for his own tuition. We have 2 more University Students at the Great Zimbabwe University Studying Accounting and the other Statistics. Outside the mentioned students we have 4 students who will be starting University this year during the September 2022 intake. This project brings hope to children who thought they could never get an education, some children have been enrolled into school by Shekinah and others re enrolled as they had already dropped out of school.

Ndine Hanya Project meaning “I Care”

During one of my several follow-up visits to one primary school where I had gone to check on progress of some children we were supporting with school fees, I would find one little girl either absent or sleeping in class. She didn’t look so well. After discussing with the teacher, I came to understand that the little girl was HIV Positive and on ART. The clinic had just changed her medication and this was making her sleep and she had challenges at home with her guardian as she was a double orphan in the custody of her sister. The little girl’s story gave birth to the Ndine Hanya Project, I further went to follow-up with various schools and learnt that some of the children we were supporting were HIV positive as well.

This project through the establishment of support groups at Health Facilities, act as a platform for addressing the day-to-day challenges that children and Young People living with HIV have to face. This could be stigma and discrimination from family, community, school to clinical issues that need the health facilities to follow-up on. Health Staff also participate in the support groups as they have a medical history of the children. Our support groups currently comprise of almost 400 children and young people who participate. We have had cases where children have failed to seek medical support or go for referrals because of lack of financial resources either to travel from the rural clinic to the District Hospital to see a Doctor resulting in small health cases getting out of hand. In these cases, Shekinah supports children and guardians with busfare and hospital bills.

Humanitarian Activities

Being a local Charity Organization, Shekinah has become a first responder when we have an emergency in the community and we have been receiving requests for help. In cases where a house has been destroyed by a fire and the family loses everything we have noted that the community or local leadership reach out to Shekinah as we already have deposits of used clothes all sizes and we have proved to be able to respond as quickly as possible. We also have anonymous people who donate groceries to us for distribution to the widows/widowers, child headed households and all sorts of cases arising in the communities.

Shekinah has in the past also embarked on very complicated medical cases, because the community believed that they would get this assistance from us. The first case was of a woman who had to undergo theatre for a case of fibroids. This was a success story within the community as the woman is a testimony that she could live and work again for herself. Due to the huge costs related to medical costs, Shekinah has not been able to take up new medical cases, although they are many such cases within the district.