And the Medyouth Project is up and running!

Even though the Medyouth Project this year got to a slow start (most members are also revising for the final year exams), I am glad to say that the project is now up and running and has both medical and non-medical students involved.

For those of you who don't know what this project i'm talking about actually is. Let me explain:
Medyouth is a a group of students from both the UK and Zim who go into schools in Bulawayo and teach a sexual education programme. The focus of the project this year is on peer education and counselling methods, focusing on puberty issues, entering into and negotiating the adult world.

PS thank-you all so much for you donations!I'm sure this will make Rae's bungee jump much easier. If any of you would prefer to write a cheque you can make it payable to Project Zimbabwe and post it to Project Zimbabwe,Kings College London, Guy's Campus, 19 Newcomen Street, London SE1 1 UL

Rachel's Jumping into the Victoria Falls (for Project Zim of course)

As many of you may know Rachel Adams (co-president of Project Zim) is currently in Zimbabwe coordinating the Medyouth, sexual health education project. In an attempt to raise funds for Project Zimbabwe, she has bravely decided that she is going to jump into the Victoria falls, well she's not literally jumping but is bungee jumping into the Victoria Falls (which i'm assuming is less scary).

Any donation would be greatly appreciated, but a suggested donation of £5 would go a very long way. Donations can be made using our pay pal link.

Project Zimbabwe's New Committee!!

Co-President - Ropa Sibusiso Chidawu

Co-President - Rachel Adams

Secretary - Alex Fonfe

Treasurer - Rowan Ambrose

Publicity Officer - Reshma Shah

Fundraising Officer - TBC
Buddy Project Coordinator - Roma Dewan

Electrinic Resources Coordinator - Samirah Toure

MedYouth Coordinator - TBC
General Officers - Sonia Abid, Ali Al Jumaily, Lisa Wallberg

Project Zimbabwe Alumni

Two of Project Zimbabwe's former presidents will be graduating from medical school this summer. Kirstent Scott will be working at King's College Hospital London where she will continue her invaluable work with the KZZ link and Jennifer Gifford-Garner will be at Whipps Cross Hospital. Jennifer hopes to take an active role in the teaching materials project and will continue to support ZHTS as a qualified trustee.

Project Zimbabwe Alumni

Kirsten Scott - President 2007/8
Jennifer Gifford-Garner - President 2008/9

PZ AGM!

A new way to donate to PZ!!

Every time you shop online you could be donating to Project Zimbabwe! Click on our icon on the right to take you to the easyfundraising web site and start shopping. Practically every shop you can think of is available, from Amazon and Tesco to M&S and Argos.

Please take a look and remember us every time you order online!!

Zimbabwean Student Coming to London!!

Linos Sibanda, a medical student from Bulawayo, will be coming to London for a 10 week elective placement this summer! He will be spending 6 weeks at King's College Hospital and 4 weeks at Northwick Park Hospital.

We wish to thank the Canon Collins Trust for their generous support and invite contact with any other interested parties who would be willing to support future students.

Raising Awareness of our Buddy Project

King's College Alumni Promotion

The Alumni of King's College will soon have access to information about Project Zimbabwe and the ability to make dontations. A link to the PZ blog will be posted on the Alumni web site in the near future.
https://alumni.kcl.ac.uk/SSLPage.aspx?pid=444

MedYouth Money!

For those KCL students who have shown an interest in travelling to Zimbabwe this summer with Rachel & MedYouth, the travel awards deadline is the 3rd April!

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/structure/admin/acareg/stureg/travel/

PZ Books Donated to Read International

We have found a brilliant new home for all the surplus books that we are unable to send to Zimbabwe; Read International! Over 30 boxes of our books were moved to the Read International storage unit last weekend and will be sorted and eventually sent to Tanzania this summer.

King's ISN

Project Zimbabwe is happy to be part of the King's International Student Network!

kingsisn@gmail.com

http://en-gb.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2203370252

ZHTS AGM 2009 Agenda

AGM!

Annual General Meeting

Project Zimbabwe AGM Details

30th April 2009

New Hunts House Classroom G.4

Guy's Campus

6pm

Committee Positions Available

President

Secretary

Treasurer

Fundraising Officer

Publicity Officer

Medyouth coordinator

Buddy Project coordinator

Resources Project coordinator

3x General Officers

Books Project Update

The books project is reducing in capacity. Unfortunately, we have had to reduce the number of boxes we are able to send via our generous shipping contact. We are therefore putting the books project on hold whilst we make arrangements for the surplus. We will be focussing our attentions on electronic resources that can easily be copied and distibuted to as many medical students in Zimbabwe as possible.
We want to thank each and every person who has donated a book to Project Zimbabwe and we hope you will to support us!

Movie Night!!

Project Zimbabwe will be hosting a Movie Night showing the feature length Zimbabwean movie "Neria" by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Where; Function Room, The Miller of Mansfield, 96 Snowsfield Road SE1 3SS
When; 17th March 2009, 6.30pm for 7.30 film start

Hope to see you there!

Movie Night!!

Project Zimbabwe Discusssion Forum Launched!

A discussion forum is now available (link on the right) for medical students and healthcare professionals in the UK and Zimbabwe. We hope it will generate some great discussions and ideas and help strengthen the new KZZ link (more info to follow). Please take a look, sign up for an account and get talking to your colleagues!

Unite ZimNite Update

UNITE ZIMNITE SUCCESS!!

Thank you to everyone who attended our fundraiser this Saturday. It was a great success and really good fun. A big thank you to all the acts who performed on the night - everyone showed how talented they were and the audience loved them all.

We managed to raise £573.80 after expenses which is a massive total and a huge help towards funding our MedYouth Programme 2009.

Many Thanks again!

Marathon For TB Alert

TB Alert conquers France in aid of Zimbabwe
Kirsten Scott

On the 22nd of November 2008, three of us braved the Beaujolais marathon in aid of the TB Alert project at Murambinda Hospital in Zimbabwe. Having been born and bred there, I have a strong interest in continuing to be involved in the health care system and have managed to visit Murambinda twice over the last three years. Our core team was comprised of an ophthalmologist (John) a vet (Hannah) and a medical student (myself) but we could not have managed without our four person support team (consisting of parents and significant others) who drove us around uncomplainingly and ensured that we had adequate amounts of food on board at all times.

Murambinda hospital is a rural mission hospital in Zimbabwe that serves a population of approximately 300,000. Despite the current crisis, it has continued to deliver effective care to the local population, so much so that people from towns over 100km away are willing to walk there to receive treatment. Since TB Alert became involved, the TB program has gathered strength with accurate data collection and decentralisation of services forming a focus for both local and visiting staff.

The marathon was part of an entire weekend of festivities to welcome the latest batch of Beaujolais nouveau into the world. The event started off well with sunshine, fancy dress and a good pre-marathon spread of coffee, wine, fruit juice and cake provided by volunteers from Fleurie. The self styled “Team Tuberculosis” ran in shirts with ‘Hôpital de Murambinda’ on the back which meant that there were regular shouts of “c’est un hôpital! alors! c’est un hôpital qui court le marathon aujourd’hui” [it is a hospital! a hospital running the marathon!]. John’s TB Alert shirt came with extra wings and he managed to complete the marathon in less than three hours. Hannah and I battled breathlessness and fatigue (not to mention snow and steep hills!) to heroically enlighten passing French men and women on the vagaries of TB in Africa (thereby finishing considerably later). Our increasing local fame culminated in an interview on French TV at the post marathon lunch the next day and we have now been offered free places in next year’s marathon. TB Alert may live to conquer the French yet again!

With the support of incredibly generous friends and family we managed to raise £4,765.80 for the district TB program in Murambinda. Further donations may be given at www.justgiving.com/kirstenscott2.

UNITE ZIMNITE!!

ZHTS Away Day!

ZHTS coupled with the International Development Unit are hosting and "Away Day" to discuss;

• Work involving the link between King's, ZHTS and Zimbabwe
• Discuss achievements and activities
• Future directions of the link

Details;

Saturday 24th January

9.30 - 4pm

Conference Centre

Western Education Centre

King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas
&
Happy New Year
from all at
Project Zimbabwe!

Zim Gear Sponsors Unite ZimNite!!

A generous donation of t-shirts to buy and a unique hoodie specially

designed as a raffle prize.

Thank you!!

Our Next Fundraiser!

January 24th 2009

7pm

Function Room

Walkabout, Temple

MSF Zimbabwe Emergency Appeal

http://www.msf.org.uk/zimbabweappeal.aspx

Next Meeting

Tuesday 13th January 2009

6pm

The Spit Boardroom

Boland House

Guy's Campus

Agenda to follow!

PZ Publication!

Student BMJ News:

London Medical Students have been forging links with their counterparts in Zimbabwe to share experiences of life and learning.

The first year of Project Zimbabwe, a collaboration between King's College, London medical school at Guy's, King's & St Thomas' Hospitals and the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, has involved 20 students in each country pairing up in an email 'buddy' system.

The students discuss the ways they are taught, and the scheme has given rise to another collaborative project called Medyouth.

This is partyle modelled on the sucessful UK sex education project Sexpression and will lead to medical students from both countries visiting schools and colleges in Bulawayo to facilitate sexual and reproductive health classes.

Project Zimbabwe founder member Kirsten Scott said "The project aims to help children prepare for adult life though fun an interactive learning. It will also provide educational development and experience of public health to medical students".

The project, which also aims to raise awareness of Zimbabwean health provision challenges amoung medical students in the UK, has collaborated with the airline Virgin to send more than 500 books to Universities in Harare and Bulawayo and some district general hospitals.

Ms Scott siad that in the longer term the plan was to work with medical school staff to help electronic resources in Zimbabwe.

Next Meeting

The next committee meeting will be:

28th November

5.30pm

The Spit Boardroom

Boland House

Guy's Campus

King's College London

Next Meeting

There will be a lunch time meeting on the 9th November to discuss the MedYouth Zimbabwe trip in detail. Review of this year's trip and also plans for 2009 will be covered. The time and venue are to be arranged. If you would like to come along , please email projectzimbabwe@gmail.com and we will pass on the details.

Raffle Prizes Donated

http://www.thegoldcoastbar.com/

http://www.circleclubcard.com/

A £30 voucher for a meal at The Gold Coast Bar and two Platinum Membership Cards for the Circle Club London have been donated as raffle prizes for our social this Sunday.

Rachel, on the PZ committee is also donating two 100billion Zim Dollar notes as prizes too!

Project Zimbabwe Social 2008!

Project Zimbabwe Social 2008!
Come along and find out all about our projects and how to get involved.

The Roebuck Pub Function Room
Sunday 12th October
7pm - 10pm

- Talks - Raffle - Wine etc etc!

Running for TB in Zimbabwe!

Kirsten, president of PZ 2007/8, is running a marathon (!) in France this November in aid of raising money for a TB programme in Murambinda, Zimbabwe. If you would like to support her and make a donation, the web page is below!

http://www.justgiving.com/kirstenscott2

Many, many thanks to the following for volunteering at Zimfest for Project Zimbabwe!
Jenny, Chloe, Laura, Kiran, Sinead, Kay, Shanti,Fay, Millie, Christine, Kirby, Nyasha, Kay's sister, Lexi, Neill & Ashleigh, Sharon, Sharon's friend, Tom, Tolandi & Celia!

The day was a fantastic success by all reports and Project Zimbabwe is very grateful for the donation they will receive from Zimfest. We look forward to Zimfest 2009! :-) Jen

MedYouth gets a new logo!

ZIMFEST 2008!!
www.wezimbabwe.org

Saturday 30th August 2008
St Georges Playing Fields
Raynes Park, London

Buy your tickets from the website today!!

Committee Changes

Secretary - Jenny Vallance

Books Project Coordinator - Roma Dewan

General Officer - Ali Al-Jumaily

Rapid sponsers PZ MedYouth Project 20008 by donating over 25 boxes of chalk that can be used to help teach our life skills programme this summer. Many thanks again!

www.rapidonline.com

MedYouth Project Moves Forward!

This summer 5 members of Project Zimbabwe will be joining fellow medical students in Bulawayo to pilot our MedYouth Project. A recent meeting hosted by Zim students has really moved the project forward with a clear set of aims and objectives and points still to be covered.

MedYouth aims to achieve its objectives by educating the youth using the life skills education programme which focuses on two main aspects:

- Reproductive Health
- Contemporary Social Issues concerning the Youth

A combination of teaching methods shall be implemented, such as the use of role-plays / drama / debates / sport / quiz competitions; as well as different teaching tools, such as Auntie Stella kits and information leaflets, amongst others.

We aim to use the above non-traditional teaching methods, which more closely involve the pupils with a look towards peer-to-peer education and interactive discussion groups, as they have been shown to generate more interest and have a longer-lasting effect on the youth. The presence of medical students is also engineered to generate interest, both as a generation close to their own that is easy to identify with and also in terms of motivation / career guidance / inspiration.

In order to measure the impact of the project, the following monitoring and evaluation tools shall be used:

- Questionnaires (before and after the programme)
- Quiz Competitions
- Debating Competitions
- UNAIDS benchmarks for effective programs


Proposed Program Topic Content:

- Absentee Parentage
- Abuse – emotional / physical / verbal / substance/ sexual
- Adolescent Reproductive Health and Sexuality
- Care and Management (including Mitigation)
- Career Guidance
- Child Protection
- Discrimination
- Divorce and Broken Homes
- Healthy Lifestyle (exercise and nutrition)
- Peer Pressure
- Relationships: family / friendship / community
- Self Esteem
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Teenage Pregnancies
- Values & Beliefs
- HIV and AIDS

Meeting

**Committee Meeting**

Thursday 5th June 2008

The Boardroom

The Spit, Boland House

Guy's Campus

King's College London

6pm

African Music Night II

African Music Night II

Another hugely sucessful night at Walkabout where 'Harare' entertained the crowd all night with their African rhythms! The event was really well attended and ALL the money raised will go towards projects run by PZ this year!

Many, many thanks to all that came and supported us!

May 2008 - African Music Night II

AGM 2008

Committee members elected;

President – Jennifer Gifford-Garner
Secretary – Alix Fonfé
Treasurer – Rowan Ambrose
Medyouth Project Officer – Rachel Adams
Buddy Project Officer– Alex Field
Books Project Officer – Alex Lake
General Officers – Kirsten Scott, Sonia Abid, Chloe Baker, Jenny Vallance

King’s –ZHTS – Zimbabwe (KZZ) Link is announced!!

The Link is based at Kings College Hospital, London. Dr Jack Barker and ZHTS have been working together for a year to support the College of Health Sciences at University of Zimbabwe [CHS-UZ] in Harare and the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Science and Technology [NUST] in Bulawayo. The Link has the support of the International Development Unit [IDU] at Kings College Hospital and THET.

At the IDU Away Day on 26th January 2008, there was a lot of enthusiasm for supporting Zimbabwe. A group of Kings staff and others from further afield met to discuss support for Zimbabwe this year. The first teaching visits are planned for March when Dr Jack Barker and Dr Charles Mazhude visit. During 2008 the Link aims to send out more staff and students to help with supporting colleagues in the two institutions.

May 2008
Professor Chidzonga, Dean of College of Health Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, was guest at a meeting at Kings College Hospital on May 17th to further the Links programme between Kings, ZHTS and institutions in Zimbabwe, including CHS-UZ. The meeting was an opportunity to discuss how the Link will operate and to develop relationships as well as provide an update on the health professional training context, determine key needs and discuss practical issues around visit logistics and funding.

Sexual Health Quiz & Training Day

In preparation for the Medyouth Project being piloted this summer, PZ committee members took part in a sexual health teacher-training day which was hosted by another King’s University group Sexpression. The skills learnt will be used by all team members to teach school children in Bulawayo about important sexual health issues.As a fundraiser for the project, Sonia took the lead on organising a Quiz night based around global and sexual health issues. The night took place in Guy’s Bar, the student venue of Guy’s Campus at King’s College and was successful in raising money that will be used in collecting training equipment for the project

November 2007 - African Music Night I

PZ hosted a HUGELY successful music night featuring Zimbabwean band HAHARE playing live! The event was attended by students from Universities all over London, Zimbabwean health professionals, Zimbabwean charity members and the general public alike. Please see the pictures and more importantly read all about African Music Night II.

Project Zimbabwe member visits Zimbabwe!

Ali visited Zimbabwe in order to meet potential co-project workers and explore ideas, aims and objectives. Please see separate post for full information about the MedYouth Link Project....