Creating Better Futures is a personal story of how education changed the life of one child. Supported by donors and with access to funding through scholarships Dorothy Dix, CEO and Co-Founder, was provided a platform on which her dreams could be realised. CBF begun as a team of very few people and has continued to grow ever since. We’re staffed by over 15 volunteers in the UK and Zimbabwe. Our team is made up of committed individuals with a desire to use their skills and a passion to contribute positively to communities.
Enhancing communities by providing volunteering experience
The work our volunteers do benefits communities in the Domboshowa region of Zimbabwe and locally around Reading, UK. Our 2016 nomination for the Pride of Reading award, recognises the value of volunteering. Whether it’s our young volunteers looking for work experience or experienced professionals from different sectors, our volunteers are never too busy or too young to change the world.
As a steadily growing team, we’re guided by our belief that children are the world’s greatest resource. We share a great passion to improve the lives of children living in extreme poverty. Access to education isn’t free in Zimbabwe. Parents and guardians have to pay school fees in order for their children to attend school. However, over a million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. This leaves a great percentage of children marginalised and with no hope of breaking free from poverty and living a better future.
We believe where you come from does not matter; every child deserves the right to be given hope and access to education to create opportunities for successful futures. Through volunteering, we use our skills and passion to improve the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children in Zimbabwe. Our hard work provides them with education and skills to break free from poverty.
As well as investing in the future of today’s younger generation, volunteering enhances personal development, confidence and brings together people from different walks of life to work together in changing the world!
Wondering how you can become part of our team?
Use your skills to help others and give back.
If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you. Steve Jobs
Last year, the Jazz Night and Fashion Show provided a hub for lyrical poets, musicians and fashionistas to showcase their talents in aid of Creating Better Futures’ vision. ‘All I knew was that those children had a need and I wanted to use the little experience that I had to meet that need, in whatever way I could’ recalls the Jazz Night volunteer organiser and high school student Mayfair Ngondonga. £808 raised on the night made it possible to continue providing schools fees, uniforms and school equipment. ‘It was a challenging and at times overwhelming project’ admits Mayfair ‘but nonetheless exciting and rewarding’.
Without the passion, creativity, hard work and commitment of our volunteers, it wouldn’t be possible to create better futures for the children and communities we support.
Education is not preparation for life, it is life itself. John Dewey
Providing access to education is part of the solution to breaking the poverty cycle. There’s no future without education, there’s no hope without support. We can’t save every child but we can begin by saving one. Through digital marketing, event hosting and child sponsorship administration, our volunteers are improving lives with one more book, one more pencil and one more school meal at a time.
Have you thought about the mark you’ll leave on the world? Do you believe you can make a contribution to making the world a better place? If you do, please contact us on volunteer@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk to join our team and help us create better futures.
If you’d like to make a difference to children we support, you can:
- Volunteer in the UK and Zimbabwe
- Help with admin, digital marketing and fundraising in our Reading office
- Search Indeed website for our current volunteering roles
- Help us provide clean water for families to cook, clean, drink and wash with
- Help teach children, construct boreholes, classrooms and toilets in Zimbabwe
- Promote us at your church, club, school and work
- Dorothy Dix, CEO and Co-Founder, can share her experience of growing up in Zimbabwe by talking to your groups and at school assemblies
- Organise activities and events using our fundraising ideas
- Fundraise for us, donate at JustGiving or text CBFZ10 £10 to 70070
- Ask people who support your fundraising event to sign a Gift Aid form; the government gives 25p extra for every £1 you raise so we get £1.25
- Sponsor a child for £15 a month to give them skills, vision and motivation
- Have fun choosing items to fill a shoebox and the joy of opening one lasts forever
- Purchase from retailers at easyfundraising; we get a percentage of what you spend
- Take advantage of retailer discounts at Savoo and we get a donation from every purchase you make
- Use easysearch to search the Internet, instead of Google, so we benefit
- Promote us by liking and sharing our blogs, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter posts
- We’ve partnered with Rotary International, with funds being provided by Rotary Clubs in the Thames Valley, and our joint projects are overseen by Rotary Club of Harare
