Constancia Bosha, CEO and Founder of the Courage of H.O.P.E. Foundation
Our speaker for Thursday, July 25, 2024, was Constancia Bosha, founder and CEO of the Courage of H.O.P.E. Foundation. The Foundation was launched in 2019 and is focused on providing resources, infrastructure and education in Zimbabwe. Constancia was born and raised in Musekiwa village, in the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe. She is the 10th child in her family and grew up in a loving family with incredibly nurturing parents. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 and lived in Massachusetts for 10 years, then moved to Atlanta. She is a survivor of physical and emotional abuse from a former spouse. She moved to Santa Rosa and ultimately received a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She currently works as a nurse for Memorial Hospital.
Constancia married a Rotarian, James Alexander, in 2018. In a visit to her childhood home during a drought in 2019, she and James realized the severity of the water problem and decided to do something about it. They partnered with the St. Helena Rotary Club and applied for a Rotary International Grant in 2021. They were awarded $82,000, which allowed them to drill to two wells that now supply water to 2,100 villagers. Courage of H.O.P.E. has received a new grant of $216,000, which will allow them to supply another 7,000 people with safe and accessible water. The Foundation is now working on improving medical care in the region by providing access to telemedicine through solar power. Two of her brothers have passed away as a result of preventable illnesses. In one of her visits to Zimbabwe she suffered a detached retina and was unable to obtain help medical care. The Foundation has now partnered with Dr. Michael Cook of Sebastopol to build a system to develop telemedicine with the use of solar power. They estimate that the solar system will cost $8,600.
Thank you, Constancia, for your fantastic work on these projects. It is wonderful to see partnerships between private parties, local Rotary clubs, and the Rotary Foundation contributing to projects that save lives and improve everyday living experiences. And thank you for taking the time to tell us about this project!
Click HERE to view a limited time recording of Constancia's moving talk.
