Awed by the imagination and spirit of Zimbabwe’s orphans, in 2005, Dennis Gaboury, an American sculptor spending the year in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, sponsored a competition among the city’s orphans to encourage and reward their creativity. More than 250 boys and girls built dolls and trucks, motorcycles, airplanes and helicopters. And in the Spring of 2006, at special awards show, they all received prizes – movie tickets and back packs, beans and pencils, courtesy of local and international donors. All their toys were displayed in an exhibition mounted at the National Gallery. And the top four toymakers garnered something even more spectacular – an airplane ride over their own hometown.

But the orphans gained more than their prizes and their moment in the spotlight: The toys were given to donors in the United States that summer and from the donations, every child who participated took home a basket of food sufficient to feed a family for a month, notebooks and pencils for school, and enough money to pay school fees. For the first time in their lives, they glimpsed the possibility of helping their families by working with their own hands. In a world where charity and handouts are the coin of the realm, they caught an inkling of dignity

Out of this, ZimKids was born. Over the past three years, we have maintained our commitment to that philosophy in our work with the city’s orphans and is now concentrating its efforts in one of Bulawayo’s poorest and most underserved neighborhoods, Pumula North, and a growing group of orphans between the ages of six and sixteen. While Gaboury began by working in 15 neighborhoods, he chose to target Pumula not only because of the magnitude of need in that community but because he was in danger of becoming one of those large, impersonal NGOs he has learned, from experience, spends a fortune on administrative costs and is not overly effective. Keeping it simple, he remains, then, as he began, just one guy with an idea, with the support of a group of local young volunteers and an able staff, and with an emphasis on person-to-person connections.

Those person-to-person, word of mouth connections brought Zimkids to the attention of Adrian Suskin. Presently a resident of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Adrian grew up in Bulawayo and has maintained contacts with his hometown in Zimbabwe assisting many over the years with school fees, housing and food. In 2008, he heard about Zimkids and began fundraising,  gathering medical supplies and shipping them to us. By 2009, he agreed to join forces with Dennis and the Zimkids leadership, Sipho, Tinashe and Prosper and today is a member of the Board of Trustees.

ZimKids has been designed to be entirely self-sustaining – and it has succeeded in that goal for almost four years. At this point, Zimkids is spending $3,500 U.S. per month on food, medication and other needs..