2019 has been a good year for our school. Our new classroom block has been progressing well and is almost entirely completed. It will be taken into use during the third term of the year, a beautiful bright and spacious classroom block. It was made possible due to generous support and funding from many friends abroad, including Mahle, Freunde, Acaccia and Simba Kufunda.

This was also the year that Kufunda began to learn and practice biodynamic farming. A workshop in April with teachers Anne and Rolf Bucher from Germany laid the foundation for Kufunda’s biodynamic farming project. A team from the village is working full time with establishing a biodynamic garden. Each Wednesday children join for community work in the garden. They have been making compost, CPP (Cow Pat Pits), stirred biodynamic compost preparations, mulched, and much more! In just a few months the garden is flourishing.

August will see us hosting the All African Anthroposophic Training (www.allafricaanthroposophictraining.org) at Kufunda during the school holidays. We will use our new classroom block as the main meeting space. The biodynamic teachers will be back to support us in deepening our work with the garden and farming, alongside a host of gifted teachers in a variety of areas. The workshops offering during the conference include an introduction to the basics of anthroposophic medicine with Dr Friedeman Schad; Waldorf education with Joan Sleigh from the Goetheanum; a workshop on working with children with Special needs with Andrea Seeman; Storytelling in the Kindergarten with Johannah Birth; Celebrating the Festivals of the Year with Richard Goodall, and homebased care for pregnancy, labour and early childhood with Julia Schad and Judith Tabberner, in addition to the Biodynamic Farming module. The overall training is led by Dr Michaela Gloeckler. It will be a rich experience for the Kufunda community and school.

In March we hosted our first festival of the year. The children delivered a wonderful presentation of their work. The class fives did a play from India about Ramahayana and each class shared poetry and song they had learnt that term.

In April two of our teachers joined the Being in Movement Waldorf Conference in Kenya, celebrating 100 years of Waldorf in the world and 30 years of Waldorf in Kenya. It was inspiring to connect with the Waldorf family of East Africa which is strong and vibrant. It gave us something to strive for in this journey of establishing Waldorf in Zimbabwe.

Our class 1 and 2 teacher Elizabeth Madanire is currently doing her Waldorf teacher training in Kenya with three modules per year for the next three years. She began last year and has been learning much, which is already deeply impacting her teaching and her classroom. We have included a small reflection by Elizabeth in this update. We are hoping to also enroll Ethel Chimenya, our class three teacher, when the training opens for a new intake in 2020 in Kenya.

#waldorf #kufunda