Community Response Initiatives

BRIEF HISTORY
CORI started in 2003 as a branch of Friends Committed to Caring (FCC), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) based in Toronto, Canada. FCC Canada brought out teams of Canadian and American volunteers on short medical missions. During these mission tours to Zambia the volunteers were also accorded an opportunity to view tourist attractions in Zambia (especially the mighty Victoria Falls and the National Parks).

By 2005, the programme grew to an extent where it required to be managed professionally. This is when the Zambian volunteers who always accompanied their Canadian counterparts on medical tours formed and registered CORI.

WHAT WE DO.
Community Response Initiatives (CORI) provides spiritual and economic relief to disadvantaged persons through:
1. Training Lay ? preachers and Lay-Leaders.
2. Training Lay - leaders, women and youths in entrepreneurship and life skills so that they start projects to support their Ministries such as:
a) Tailoring, b) tie and dye and embroidery. c) Baking, d) Gardening, e) Animal husbandry,
f) Chicken rearing, g) fish farming, h) Bee ? keeping and i) Selling by adding value.
3. Training of HIV/AIDS home based care providers, peer educators and counselors.
4. Build homes for the aged and infirm, orphans and widows.
5. Propagate Good news of the Kingdom of God,
6. Inform, educate and entertain communities through community radio stations.
7. Restore the environment by developing Community Forest Protection Clubs and planting trees.

HOURS OF WORK.
Volunteer missionaries and resource persons work according to the project work plan. Normally this is less than Six hours a day. This will be agreed upon between the volunteer and the Director.

WHO DO WE SERVE?
Our beneficiaries are rural communities who survive on subsistence farming. They practice shifting
cultivation in search of fertile land causing deforestation in the process. They also rely on pagan survival
methods such as witchcraft, traditional illicit beer brewing and prostitution to access basic human needs.


WHAT THE VOLUNTEERS ARE EXPECTED TO DO
Volunteers can choose to work in any of the following 14 sectors:
1. Training community members in Tailoring, tie and dye and embroidery, Baking, Gardening,
Animal husbandry, Chicken rearing, fish farming, Bee ? keeping and any innovative life skills.
2. Training of HIV/AIDS home based care providers, peer educators and counselors.
3. Build homes for the aged and infirm, widows and orphans.
4. Work in a Christian community radio station
5. Become radio producers, announcers, presenters or broadcasters.
6. Train Lay leaders and plant churches
7. Train elderly persons how to read and write
8. Teach children in Christian Basic and High schools
9. Teach Community health providers
10. Teach entrepreneurship.
11. Participate in medical missions.
12. Work as officers at the CORI H/Q in various capacities such as :
a) Information management officers,
b) Accounts clerks
c) Purchasing and supplies officers
d) Customs clearing
e) Project coordinators.
f) Human resource specialist
13. Train communities and help them plant trees
14. Teach conservation farming

BENEFITS TO VOLUNTEERS
1. Volunteers will get a certificate of Service and a commendation letter from the Government department under which they will serve.
2. During their stay, they are assisted to visit tourist attractions including the mighty Victoria Falls, national parks and bird sanctuaries.