We were so fortunate to welcome Dennis Gaboury and Tinashe Basa – the Founder and Director of Zimkids Orphan Trust – back to PCS for their 7th annual visit and Skype session with Zimkids at the Center in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe!

The Center that Dennis and Tinashe operate offers orphans in Bulawayo (thousands, to date) a chance to combat the poverty, malnutrition, AIDS crisis and lack of medical care that plagues their communities with an academic education and meaningful life skills training. Students of the Center play a huge role in building and maintaining the facilities, mentoring and teaching younger students, and advocating and raising funds by creating tin sculptures and cloth dolls for sale. These toys are wildly popular at PCS, as are the portraits and narratives of the child artists that accompany each toy, and our classrooms have been ringing since their visit with stories of Zimkids.

While Dennis and Tinashe were here, we loved talking with the kids, asking them questions, singing songs and just being silly together. PCS students were also so receptive and connected; you could see that things were resonating – “Africa is a beautiful place!” and “Oh, life is a lot harder there than it is for us,” and “I’m smiling because now we’re friends!” were just a few of the comments we heard from the PCS audience.
Thank you so much to Dennis and Tinashe for the visit, the connection to our kid friends on the other side of the globe, and for the vital work you do.

Kindergarten students were so inspired by the Zimkids’ handiwork that they requested sewing lessons back in their classroom. Things went so well and for so long, they even came up with a work song!