SIR Water for Weya Project

	The Seattle - International District Rotary Club (SIR), working with the Queen Anne (formerly Elliott Bay) Rotary Club, also of Seattle, provided four rural  villages in the Weya Communal Land in eastern Zimbabwe with water improvements.
	The project drilled two new borehole wells and repaired two other existing boreholes to provide clean drinking and household-use water.  The provision of safe water at a reasonable distance from households greatly reduces the burden of women to adequately provide for their families.   Members of the Zimbabwe Artists Project identified the provision of drinking water as one of the highest priorities.
	The Weya Communal Land is an area of approximately 50 square miles where Africans were resettled from their ancestral lands which were taken over by European immigrant farmers early in the 20th century.  The four villages to receive wells are contiguous communities home to approximately 4,000 people.
In Weya, as in much of Zimbabwe, most men have had to leave the rural area to seek work in cities, leaving the women to look after almost all aspects of rural life.  They are subsistence farmers, mothers, householders.  Many of the women of Weya are widows.  Even if women do have husbands in the cities, little or no money comes back to the rural area from them.  So most of the money required in the rural area – for food, clothing, school fees, medicines, transport, seeds and fertilizers, etc. – must come from the women’s own efforts.  Small plots of poor land and reliance on uncertain Weather mean that income from agriculture is unpredictable and limited.  For the artists of Weya, then, income from their art is crucial to their economic security.
SIR will be working with the Zimbabwe Artists Project (ZAP).  ZAP assists women artists from  rural Weya in eastern Zimbabwe to become economically self-reliant by purchasing their art and selling it in the U.S.   There is a very limited market for Weya art in Zimbabwe itself.  ZAP is the largest purchaser of the Weya women’s art, paying more than twice as much per piece as anyone else does.   ZAP pay cash at the time of purchase directly to the artists.
Zimbabwe Artists Project does more than just provide a market for Weya artists in the U.S.  ZAP has assisted them in creating their own artists’ cooperative association by providing technical assistance in constitution writing and fundamentals of bookkeeping.  ZAP gives the artists continuing feedback about the marketability of their art and, when possible, provides art workshops to enhance their skills.	.
ZAP frequently transport artists and art supplies on the 200-mile round-trip to Harare, the capital city.   ZAP has also done a number of special projects with artists who have emergencies or compelling needs that can’t be taken care of with normal art purchases, such as rebuilding fragile houses, medical emergencies, eyeglasses, and teacher-training college.	Zimbabwe Art Project 2236 SE Ladd Avenue, Portland, OR 97214 (503) 232-7057  zimartpro@hotmail.com  Zimbabwe Artists Project is a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization.
Club Contact:	Mardie Rhodes or Hillary Hamilton