Helping-Hand 2025: Harvesting hope

Hayley Still introduces the 2025 Helping-Hand Appeal, which supports international food security projects.

Each year the Helping-Hand Appeal focuses on a different area of The Salvation Army’s international work. The 2025 appeal focuses on stories from The Salvation Army’s Raising Champion Farmers project in Zimbabwe, which aims to strengthen the resilience of farmers in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate.

As the climate crisis makes rainfall scarce and unpredictable, traditional farming methods are proving insufficient in rural Zimbabwe. The Raising Champion Farmers project aims to use innovative solutions to equip farmers with the tools and knowledge needed to adapt to changing conditions, secure their food supply and improve their overall wellbeing.

For many years, The Salvation Army in Zimbabwe has collaborated with Foundations for Farming to strengthen food security projects and support thousands of farmers. This project follows on from previous successful projects, as well as a recent pilot that has been phased up to reach more people in three rural areas of Zimbabwe: Bindura, Makonde and Mupfure. In each location, 100 farmers participate in the training and are then encouraged to share their knowledge, expertise and experience with family and friends.

The key principles of conservation agriculture that are central to the farmer training are zero tillage, mulching – soil coverage to ensure moisture is retained in dry season – and crop rotation. Conservation agriculture is simple and cheap, since it does not require large farming machinery. It also promotes the use of organic rather than synthetic fertilisers, which prove financially costly and ultimately damaging to the soil.

Water access is a major challenge and so two boreholes have been drilled in the Bindura and Makonde communities. These have also reduced outbreaks of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, which were previously prevalent. This has boosted the morale of project participants and garnered praise from the nearby community members.

Marble Mupfurira is one of the farmers who is taking part in the project. Since joining and attending each of the training sessions, she has seen the benefits of conservation agriculture: ‘We were given seeds by the project and everything that we needed so that we could do everything we were taught.’

It has been a journey for the project team to shift attitudes and see behavioural change. Marble herself admits that she was initially reluctant to fully adopt the unfamiliar farming methods: ‘I had some crops but I was not using mulch and [organic] fertiliser. I was farming, but it was not effective. We planted two sections, one with mulch and one without. When we came to our garden, we found that the vegetables with the mulch and compost grew better and tasted better than those without.’

During training, farmers are clustered into groups of 10 and they then support one another as needed, not only with peer learning but also with practical tasks, such as turning the thermal compost.

Marble appreciates being able to work alongside friends and family: ‘I have friends in this project. We can help each other each time. Especially when we first started as a group, when we were moving from one farm to another. We worked as a group in everything.’

Marble is a mother of five sons and a daughter. She is keen for them to learn about conservation agriculture and take part: ‘It is my wish to work with my family so that they can know how it is done, because they are the future of tomorrow.’

Any money raised for the appeal this year will be added to the international food security fund and used to support upcoming food security projects – see the next page for ideas on how you can get involved!