 In 1992, an American lady, Dr. Janice Stevens, in collaboration with the Charity Sisters living and working in Kabwata, Lusaka, founded the very first school within the Zambia Open Community Schools network. From a class of 50 girls, meeting in an open field in Misisi Compound, more classes and other schools in other parts of Lusaka were started, although remaining largely unconnected. In the mean time, as Dr. Stevens was continuing to fund these separate schools, a decision was made to join them together under one project, which would oversee their operations and development. This new Organization was called Zambia Open Community Schools (ZOCS) and became registered as an NGO in 1995. The Project continued to expand, both in the number of schools, classes, pupils and teachers as well as at the office level with staff and programmes.
Over the years, the Organization has grown to its current state of thirty-three (33) schools providing quality basic education to approximately 8,500 orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), under the supervision of over 200 teachers some of whom are trained under the MOE - Zambia Teacher Education Course (ZATEC) in four districts namely, Lusaka, Kafue, Chongwe and Kabwe.
Its current programmes involve the provision of quality basic education, community development and empowerment, teacher training, micro-finance, advocacy, administration, monitoring and evaluation. In some selected schools, vocational skills training are also offered. Therefore, Zambia Open Community Schools’ (ZOCS) main strategy of supporting community schools has been to mitigate the impact of AIDS and poverty on orphans and vulnerable children, through the continued provision of access to quality education for OVC. The focus is on scaling up prevention, care and support to affected learners and teachers. Through the provision of child -centered learning and social interaction among learners through Edu-Sport and peer education for positive behaviour change. This entails provision of quality basic education through teacher training and distribution of relevant teaching and learning materials, capacity development and empowerment of parent community school committees (PCSCs) and supervisors, advocacy, administration, monitoring and evaluation. The strategy also includes fundraising activities for enhancing financial sustainability of programme interventions through in-come generating activities.
The initiative under ZOCS (as an Associate member to ZCSS) has since grown through PCSC Training For Transformation programme and MOE-ZATEC distance education programme training to include other districts i.e. Mumbwa, Chongwe, Choma, Siavonga and Kalomo districts (Central, Lusaka and Southern provinces), with a total enrolment of 8,500 pupils under the supervision of 207 volunteer teachers, some of whom have been trained by ZOCS under the existing MOE-ZATEC programme, through an Agreement between MOE/ZCSS/ZOCS, while some of them still remain untrained.
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