So Community, Land, and then the third is the Children. Through our work with community we used to run youth leadership programs and we saw that many young people were coming out of education system wounded, not believing in themselves. So we've begun, about 5 years ago, a Waldorf-inspired primary school. For many years we've been working with rural communities with Waldorf-inspired preschool and kindergarten setups.

Everything that we learning is almost, in many ways, its not inherent in the children, but what we see with the young people coming out of the school, we had to do a lot of unlearning to support them in coming into this way of being with each other in more generative and visionary ways.

Those are the three aspects of life at Kufunda, that is having an impact on our neighboring communities… I think when people come here, what they see is, it's almost like we remind them that you can be a Zimbabwean community and not let go of their roots. So many Training Centers they chop the forest and then they build their square buildings with their tin roofs, and we do have some buildings like that here, but the essence of Kufunda is you come in and you see the African village. You see all of these round rondovuls with the thatch roofs, nestled amongs the trees, and with the composting toilets and the wood saving stoves…

So, when people come they step into the lived experience of ‘how can community be, how else can it be?’ Because we live in the rural and in the journey to the modern we're losing so much. At Kufunda we are saying you don't have to lose that, and in fact, we have to build on who we are and what we know and then go forward. It seems to be an important part of our work that rural communities from elsewhere can come and visit and learn with us in this little oasis.”

That was where the clarity that Kufunda isn't simply an initiative that goes out and meets people in community, Kufunda is an initiative that builds something here that is our own learning, our way in to the answer to those questions. A place where people can come and be away from their everyday, be in a different, almost like a cocoon, a place to be nestled in a place and process where they could then be with those questions and then hopefully out of those develop their dreams, their initiatives and then go home and get to work on them.

So, the beginning of 2013 everyone is kind of coming out, but still really beleaguered. We switched to a US dollar economy and things are beginning to find their feet again. During all those years of hardship, often when we would gather as a village and ask what is working?, what is not working? and we would look at ourselves and go, “We are not doing very well…” so we were quite critical of ourselves. This 2013 January celebration, it was a week again. We invited our rural communities, we invited our friends from overseas… we didn't have as many as for my birthday, but dear friends of Kufunda from South Africa, from the UK, from Harare that came to be with us again for a week to celebrate the first 10, actually 11, years of Kufunda. So for the first time, in a long time, we didn't point out all we could have done better, it was just a week of celebration. That was actually when the impulse for the Waldorf school was born.

What I learned from that, is when we truly celebrate, and of course you can’t celebrate all of the time, but it has to be a point where you really honor and acknowledge what you’ve done. Out of celebration, the seed of the next can rise. It felt very strong, and now it's too far away that I can’t give you the exact details, but I remember coming out of that… in fact there was a conversation in the Dare about, now it is time for us to really attend to the children.

We already had a little bit of Waldorf coming in, but it was like; school! We need to build a school. Then it was a long winding path but eventually here it is the school growing and it is beautiful.

So, kindergarten was held here in 2010, but then in 2013 a stake was put in the ground. We actually had been doing the school since 2013 in partnership in Harare. It is only the last 5 years that it's been our own school out here at Kufunda Village. It was when we grew to grade 3 that we decided we needed to do it here. So we added a grade and this is the first year that we reached to grade 7, which is the end of primary school for Zimbabwe.

So, for a little reflection on how that's been or changed or enhanced the Kufunda Learning Village, it's been amazing actually. My sense is that the main thing is that it has brought a life to the center. So, my sense is actually that the children, the school, is at the heart of Kufunda. It is interesting, we started with community, and the first community workshops we ran out, of that appreciative inquiry that we would do in every community workshop we would ask; What is your dream? every time the children came in.

So many of the women would always bring in the children, whether it was the AIDS orphans or the the local children, always came in. So the guidance to work with the children came in right from the beginning from the community women.’We have to work with the children!’ So we began, and initially we saw how they worked with the children was this archaic British, like little military school! It was terrible. So, we were like, we’ve got to find something else! Then we met someone who knew about Waldorf and then Waldorf came in and we were like, ‘Oh my god, this is so resonate with the ethos of Kufunda!’

Once the school was happening at Kufunda it's like everyday, because they come to school every day, except for holidays, but before when it was a Learning Village where we were running workshops, you could have long periods where there wasn't a workshop. Then the village would get a bit quiet and we would still be working with the land, but with the school it was like it was a heartbeat that came to life! …and the parents are working at Kufunda and the children are going to school there… it's like it's brought another aliveness, yeah.

We just had the year end festival, we have not been able to have festivals for the whole year. This was the first time in a long time we have been able to do a festival again because of Covid. It was so wonderful and to feel the energy and the confidence of the children! This is what the parents have seen, they have older siblings who have gone to the government schools… No offense to go to schools but if you don’t fit into the box then you gradually gradually have your confidence eroded…

So, for the parents over the years, as demonstrated so beautifully in the festival, is to see their children shine, and glow, and PROUDLY come forth! ...and to actually love school. I think the school and the children are also kindling a sense of hope in the parents, in a sense of belief in the future but also in themselves as Zimbabweans!

One of my colleagues, who I speak with often and has her children at the school, with her older son at the state school says how Kufunda's school is making all the difference in her children. Our schooling is what’s holding us back, so often, and limiting us to step forward with our creativity.

Regarding the first all-school event where each class shared their work with the other classes, it was lovely to see the kids so proudly sharing their work and also so interestedly, like, ‘What are these guys doing?’ I had a sense of, especially from the younger ones, to see what the older students are doing and be like, ‘This is where are we going!’ It was such a beautiful way to recognize the journey of where they have been and where they are going.

For the biodynamic farming, I would dream that, again, we could be a center for Zimbabwe, maybe even the region, around biodynamics.

Biodynamic farming came out of anthroposophy, which is also where Waldorf comes from, and came through Rudolf Steiner. So we work with the land in a very careful way… with permaculture we're mimicking the intelligence of nature which is amazing and wonderful! With biodynamic farming, my experience is, we take one step further, at the risk of sounding like I'm comparing it and saying this is better, but we do take a step where human beings are then working with what's in nature to create preparations, it's like homeopathic preparations, to strengthen the vitality of the soil and the plants. We are bringing in, yeah, vitality and elements from the cosmos, as well as from the Earth.

It is a healing agriculture. It really is a healing agriculture and I wish we could spread that here in service of this beautiful land and also in service of the people, because my experience is, you know, we are what we eat.

When I'm eating food that is really alive, not just organic, but really alive!, something more becomes possible for me and so that is what our children, our people, need to be eating.

Then with the community, it's, yeah I'm realizing it's nice to have this conversation… so that we began with the youth and then we brought the community organizers in… and something about… umm… and Kufunda hasn't been working very specifically with youth the last few years, we’ve been working much more with Community organizers… so it's something about, in this reflection with you, that my vision would be that we could become a center that could be much more available to young people. So we've been talking,

in the last 2 years, but not landing it… about vocational training and vocation in the bigger sense of the word.

So, vocational training, we often think of practical skills like carpentry and this and that… and often vocational training centers are for people who aren't doing very well and can’t hack it academically, but when we say that the word vocation, like ‘What is your vocation?’ As a deeper, deeper question. So for me, there is something about, ‘What if we could become, so this is really still future speculation, but a Vocational Center for Young People where they could connect more deeply with who they really are and what they have to bring to the world! Some of that will then show up really in craftsmanship, but also a carpenter is not just slapping together chairs, but are putting them together with care and love and attention and beauty. So, there's something for me around returning to the work with the children, which has been knocking, but we haven't quite brought it in yet… then the community work to continue from that first impulse… yeah, celebrating the gifts and out of that supporting the generative co-creativity that can arise… that was a mouthful!

Maybe just the one thing I didn’t mention that we are working with it I think relates to all of this, is that we've been doing work with women and women's empowerment, and more recently now also beginning to host circles for men. That part of the question, ‘What does it take to create healthy vibrant community?’ is human beings who believe in themselves and who are ready and willing to serve. The gender dynamic, in this country… there is a lot that needs to be worked through there to move towards that… so that working with the children and with the youth, but also with those young girls and older women actually believing in themselves and believing that their voices, are not the same, but at least of equal value as the men. Then for the men, to be like ‘what does it mean to be a man today?’ I think men are actually quite threatened in Zimbabwe by the women slowly finding their way. So, something about realizing we can't just work at the level of community, but the level of gender, yes, gender work is also important! That is maybe a strange place to end, but that just came through as something key that I hadn't spoken.

Because we come from a history where everything has been separated when we try to bring it together too quickly, it doesn't work, it's not real. So there is that need for women, not with anger… (actually in the first years of our woman's work, I was angry!) but to do this, not with anger and actually, our woman's work has nothing to do with the men. When it is an ‘against,’ it is really more of the same. It is really a space where the question of ‘who am I?’ It is the same questions, exactly the same, but I need my space with my sisters because when we are all together, I do not feel so safe. Later, at a certain point I can find my way and then we can bring it all together. The same with the young people, they need their own space and at a certain point they can join us. We had youth program, then community program and the youth were subsumed under the community programs, as we were like ‘we can just have everyone together!’ but, somehow, the youth, they disappeared. So, there is something about ‘when do we separate and then how do we come together?’ yes, that feels really important. Thank you.