ABOUT US
THE DREAM
A LEARNING CENTRE IN ZIMBABWE
KUFUNDA began as a dream 21 years ago when Maaianne Knuth, founder, returned from Denmark to Zimbabwe.
Her own experience of the wisdom and beauty of the Zimbabwean people, and especially those from rural places, led her to create KUFUNDA as a place of learning, where people could recover their sense of pride, diversity and capacity in working with their own knowledge to create a healthy and vibrant community.
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Maaianne is an experienced facilitator and designer of group learning and co-creation processes. She is passionate about supporting people in coming together in more authentic and life-affirming ways. Maaianne’s story bridges Europe and Africa in an arc that travels from Copenhagen, where she studied international business, to Zimbabwe, where she co-founded Kufunda. Her work in hosting creative and generative processes, including conscious dance, mindfulness, and time in nature supports Kufunda in hosting individuals and communities in waking to who they are and what they can be within their communities - moving towards a more just and beautiful world.
THE MISSION
HEALING IN COMMUNITY - HEALING WITH THE LAND - HEALING EDUCATION
We care about people creating their own solutions. We care about working with the diversity and wealth that we have, to create what we need. We believe that change begins with conscious and confident people, coming together to explore what matters most to them. Then healthy action can flow.
We care about the land, and wish to practice and share growing our food in such a way that we continue to enrich and improve the soil with the vision to leave the land in a better and better condition year on year – leaving it better off for our children.
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We have also learnt that we cannot do this work without including our children, and so for the past three four years have been running our own Waldorf Inspired School alongside our other programmes and work. The children have connected us more deeply with our local community, which has been an unexpected gift.
our approach
At our core is learning - inner and outer - in service of community.
Our work is relational. We cultivate relationships with ourselves, with the land, with each other.
We teach and offer what we have already lived through.
Out of our lived experience we demonstrate and support people, communities and organisations to learn processes and practices that allow the wisdom of the whole community to emerge in generative and practical ways.
We have witnessed how our processes and practices enable individuals and communities to step into their own agency, take charge of their destiny and vision, and open to new ways of being together at this time.
KUFUNDA'S PROCESSES
Hosting Healthy Vibrant Communities
PRACTICAL
SUSTAINABILITY
Kufunda teaches many practical skills of sustainability to rural communities. Including: food and herb processing, eco-building, building wood saving stoves, organic farming (permaculture and biodynamics), bee-keeping, tree planting, soap making, and more
SUSTAINABILITY
THE ART OF HOSTING
The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter is a participatory approach to working with groups, organizations and community in more interactive, engaging and thus also effective ways. The Art of Hosting nurtures each person to show up more fully, and brings the collective wisdom to life. We regularly offer Art of Hosting with a growing network of practitioners and the approach underpins all our work.
ART OF HOSTING
GO DEEP
Go Deep is an award winning process-based multi-day game that brings together groups of people in a community to work in deep and transformative ways. People are supported in practical ways to explore themes that affect daily interactions - such as issues of Power, Diversity, Vision and more. Through the Game these deeper issues are explored in generative ways.
GO DEEP
OASIS
GAME
The Oasis Game, is an innovative community engagement process that listens to the voices of the community expressing their dreams. Out of these dreams the community mobilises around one shared dream that can be made manifest in a short amount of time. It is a collaboration between the community, the local authority and local corporates, inviting everyone to step into the initiative and take ownership of a community transformation.
OASIS GAME
SUSTAINABILITY
COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
Our community engagement draws on a variety of participatory and embodied approaches, that brings everyone into the conversation and
co-creation. With Covid our work has become ultra-local with our immediate neighbours. This has brought a capacity for a deepened on-going every day relationship with our close neighbors - coming together in community and for community.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
WOMEN ARE
MEDICINE
We have been working with women’s empowerment for almost ten years. In our women are medicine work we support women to return to the grace, the power and the pride in what it means to be a woman today. Our core assumption is that women are not a 'problem to be solved', but a gift to be embraced, and so we navigate the territory of the many challenges facing women today from a place of discovering and recovering the innate strength and capacity that resides in each one
WOMEN ARE MEDICINE
EMBODIED
PRACTICES
Kufunda offers many embodied processes to support our core community work. Movement Medicine is a body based movement meditation practice. Through it people can experience the transformative power of one’s full-bodied, full-hearted, open-minded creativity in motion. Family and Systemic Constellations are a process designed to help reveal the hidden dynamics in a that influence a particular issue, creating a view of the whole.
EMBODIED PRACTICES
GATEWAY
ZIMBABWE
Gateway Zimbabwe is a co-creation of Kufunda, ORAP and Trust Africa with a purpose to catalyze agency, enhance social cohesion, build healthy communities and contribute to reweaving the social fabric of Zimbabwe. In Gateway Kufunda is bringing our participatory approach to a much wider audience. We are co-creating community fellowship programmes, enabling innovative community strengthening processes, and bringing together diverse Zimbabweans in healing and culture building
GATEWAY ZIMBABWE
