Zimbabwe Visually Impaired Economic Empowerment Organisation (ZVIEEO) recently held its second quarter meeting at the Dorothy Duncan Centre for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Harare, coinciding with its first anniversary celebrations.
Formed in July last year, ZVIEEO aims to enhance the livelihoods of its members and communities living with disabilities. Its members are graduates of Dorothy Duncan Centre for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. It started as a social support group where members would share ideas and knowledge about income-generating projects and how to attain collective empowerment.
The organisation’s structure consists of chairperson Isaac Mabhutsu, Nyarai Nkwaira (vice chairperson) Venencia Taona (treasurer), Bruce Munakamwe (secretary), Justice Ibvisai (vice secretary) and Owen Mungofa (media and public relations manager).
“Having acquired the knowledge that we were sharing virtually amongst ourselves, we thought of taking this a step further by transferring it and putting it into practice. There was no better way to do that than by coming together to form an organisation,” Mabhutsu said.
ZVIEEO has nine key result areas categorised into three clusters: the executive committee, business development unit and media and public relations committee. Each cluster oversees specific aspects of the organisation’s activities such as registration, recruitment of members, financial management, business development initiatives, media and public relations, resource mobilisation, disability advocacy, marketing strategy and research development.
The executive committee led by Mabhutsu is responsible for administration. It manages issues to do with the registration of the organisation, recruitment of members and financial management.
The business development unit cluster (BDU), chaired by Nkwaira, focuses on establishing income-generating projects, establishing and overseeing business development initiatives and supervising resource mobilisation and disability advocacy.
The media and public relations committee, comprising five members - chairperson Owen Mungofa, Wilfred Kavanji, Justice Ibvisai and Gertrude Mhiripiri coined the organisation's motto ‘empowerment for all regardless of disability’ and designed the logo. “Our goals include making the group visible to the outside world. We have created social media handles. We have not posted anything yet, but we are looking forward to being active on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram,” Mungofa said.
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Other committees are still in the formulation stage and are yet to be legally constituted. “When we had our previous meeting, we only had one committee (BDU). Today, we have two, including the media and public relations committee. Analysis of the biannual report and the performance of the organisation’s activities will be addressed through those three clusters.”
Upon its founding the group had eleven members which has since grown to twenty-six affiliated members, with approximately one hundred and fifty active and passive members including members within the Dorothy Duncan Centre for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
ZVIEEO recently registered as a private voluntary organisation at the Norton Social Welfare offices and is in the process of acquiring land. The application has already been done and Nkwaira announced that they are earmarking Mashonaland West.
Through its business development unit, ZVIEEO is pursuing several projects, including mushroom, poultry and fish farming, with mushroom farming topping the prioritisation list of all fourteen projects.
Nkwaira revealed to IndependentXtra that her committee did a market analysis, including the technical and financial feasibility of the mushroom project. They also carried out studies on risk assessment and regulatory compliance.
“We opted for mushroom farming because it does not need a huge area of land to carry out activities. The other reason is that it is not a seasonal crop. It can be grown throughout the year and the market is available. We plan to carry out more visibility studies on other projects.”
