Stories From the Ground
Cyclone Idai Recovery
Cyclone Idai hit Zimbabwe in mid-March 2019 — the first cyclone to strike the country in over a decade. It tore through the eastern highlands with heavy rain, flooding, and landslides, devastating the districts of Chimanimani and Chipinge in particular.
The responder: Vimbayi Mazhani. Vimbayi Mazhani was a Mercy Corps water, sanitation, and hygiene program manager, a native Zimbabwean who was based in South Sudan but flew home to join the emergency response, arriving just days after the storm hit. Facing the scale of destruction in her own country was disorienting even for someone with humanitarian experience — she described people still in shock in the immediate aftermath, with power, water, and markets all wiped out and roads and bridges too damaged to allow access. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
Reaching people was the first battle. Because bridges had been destroyed, it took almost 12 days after the cyclone struck before responders could even get into Chimanimani, one of the hardest-hit districts. Even once some roads were patched up, continuing rains kept complicating access — vehicles getting stuck was a recurring problem. Mercy Corps
What Mercy Corps actually did. Mercy Corps took the lead on the water, sanitation, and hygiene response, working with the local Ministry of Health to divide up areas of need among responding partners and carrying out assessments in wards as they became reachable. On the ground, that translated into distributing emergency hygiene kits and building temporary latrines and handwashing stations in the affected wards. Zooming out to the wider WASH response in the district, partners collectively built 77 temporary latrines serving 1,051 people living in temporary shelters, along with 44 handwashing stations across Chimanimani. Mercy Corps + 2
How communities responded. People had lost everything, and the gratitude showed — community members pitched in to help unload relief supplies without expecting anything in return. One line from a community member stuck with Vimbayi: "You have brought life to us after the disaster." Mercy Corps
Weeks later — the harder, slower recovery. By the time of the interview, some of the immediate crisis had eased — more wards were reachable, and basic water and hygiene access had been restored. But the deeper wounds remained: families who'd lost their homes were still waiting in holding facilities for permanent relocation, and some who'd lost loved ones were still coming to terms with not having been able to give them a proper burial. Others were slowly working to rebuild. Mercy Corps
What was still needed. Looking ahead, Vimbayi pointed to destroyed farms and banana plantations, and the looming risk of drought, as reasons donors needed to fund longer-term livelihoods recovery — alongside psychosocial support and permanent shelter, with winter approaching and survivors still needing warm clothing.
Stories From the Ground
Vocational Training for Youth
The setting. Nyasha Zulu, 20, and Simbarashe Mudara, 21, had spent most of their lives in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town about 30 kilometres from Harare with no real industry of its own — the kind of place where, without other options, young people drift toward risky behaviour just to fill the time. Mercy Corps
The program. Mercy Corps launched the vocational training initiative in 2008 under the NGO Joint Initiative for Urban Zimbabwe, and by the time of this article it had supported more than 300 young people in Chitungwiza, drawing mainly from vulnerable and low-income households. Rather than running the training itself, Mercy Corps worked through tertiary institutions like Young Africa, teaching practical, in-demand trades — motor mechanics, metal fabrication, auto electrics, hairdressing, catering — and then giving youth a chance to put those skills to work through industrial and community-based apprenticeships and internships. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
What it did for Nyasha and Simbarashe. Both graduated from motor mechanics training and received a start-up kit from Mercy Corps, positioning them to build their own trade rather than compete for scarce formal jobs — a serious obstacle at the time, given the article cites unemployment levels around 85% nationally. Simbarashe put it simply: "Now I'm working as a paid intern with a mechanic in Chitungwiza." He was already thinking about opening his own workshop down the line. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
Why it worked. The program's value wasn't just technical — business planning and management training was layered in alongside the trade skills, so graduates weren't just competent tradespeople but had a real shot at competing in the market and building sustainable livelihoods. Mercy Corps framed the deeper goal as twofold: building market-ready technical skills, and preparing young people to become engaged, accountable citizens — treating the two as inseparable.
Stories From the Ground
Agri-Fin Mobile
The idea. Mercy Corps launched Agri-Fin Mobile in July 2012 with backing from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, built on the premise that mobile phones — even in remote farming areas — were already reaching most smallholder farmers, so financial services, market information, and agricultural advice could be "bundled" into a single mobile package instead of arriving piecemeal. The program worked by bringing together local mobile tech companies, financial institutions, and research organizations rather than Mercy Corps trying to deliver everything itself. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
What the bundle actually offered. Farmers could get real-time market prices, weather forecasts, mobile banking, and links to buyers and fertilizer suppliers — all through a phone they already carried. The business case mattered as much as the farmer benefit: partners in the bundle stood to gain a bigger customer base, stronger loyalty, better credit-risk data, new revenue, and steadier supply chains — the kind of incentive structure that makes a program self-sustaining rather than dependent on continued donor funding. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
How it was built. Before rolling anything out, teams ran baseline surveys in rural villages across all three countries to find out what was actually holding farmers back. The common threads were weak market infrastructure, limited access to financial systems, unpredictable pest and disease problems, and unfair trading terms driven mostly by farmers simply lacking information — though each country had its own specific wrinkles. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
Indonesia and Uganda got the detailed rollouts. In Indonesia, the program connected 18 partners — including a Mercy Corps-founded microfinance bank and the national Ministry of Agriculture — through an existing mobile agricultural network, pairing trusted government extension workers with better information to boost their credibility with farmers. In Uganda, Mercy Corps partnered with a financial services provider to extend a cloud-based service that tracks farmers' production and helps assign them credit ratings, delivered through government extension officers alongside advisory content and supplier contacts. Mercy CorpsMercy Corps
Zimbabwe — the thin part. The only Zimbabwe-specific line in the piece says Mercy Corps was "developing" a partnership with a mobile phone operator and its mobile money arm to address rural farmers' financial and information needs — described as exciting, but clearly earlier-stage than the Indonesia and Uganda rollouts at the time of writing. Mercy Corps