Asset Based Community Development

Led by senior headman Mponda and Gladys Mponda

When every school in the area turned away her son Warren, Gladys Mponda did something nobody expected: she opened one herself. No teaching certificate. A handful of secondhand textbooks. Her own house, repurposed into a classroom. And in that house, Mponda Community School was born. A place for children who were differently abled, or whose families simply couldn't afford the fees at government schools.

"I felt I just couldn't let him waste away in the village when I could offer him an education instead."

Asset-Based Community Development

That same spirit of refusing to accept limitations has defined how Gladys and her husband, senior headman Mponda, now le ad their community under BLC's Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) model. The approach is straightforward in principle: mobilise community members to drive their own development using local resources, rather than waiting for outside solutions.

A different kind of support

Before BLC came into the picture, the Mpondas were already leading. What they lacked was backing. Knowledge. Tools. A stipend that made the work sustainable rather than an endless personal sacrifice. BLC provided all of that, not by taking over, but by strengthening what was already there.

The effect was almost immediate. As residents began seeing real change in their daily lives and their incomes. Their trust in local leadership grew. People followed rules more readily. New ideas gained traction faster. The Mpondas weren't just headman and wife anymore; they had become the visible proof that their community could move.

"Our impact as leaders has increased. People have seen what we do, they've felt a change in their lives and in their pockets."

From kitchen table to registered NGO

What started as an informal group eventually outgrew its informality. In 2025, the Mponda Core Group registered as the Communal Service Society, a legally recognised NGO under Zambian law. It was a real milestone and helps them to work toghether with other organziations. But it also revealed something worth paying attention to: community members, many of them steeped in the culture of traditional leadership, sometimes made decisions for people rather than with them.

BLC recognised this and responded not with criticism, but with a training programme developed together with the Southern African Wildlife College. The training focused on a different kind of leadership that listens before it decides. Two of four sessions are already complete; the remaining two, aimed at putting those skills into operational practice, are planned for 2026.

The work is ongoing — and intentionally so. Transferring genuine ownership takes time, capacity, and trust. The Mpondas' story shows what becomes possible when communities are supported to lead on their own terms.

Still becoming

The work isn't finished. It was never meant to be finished quickly. Transferring genuine ownership - the kind that sticks, doesn't collapse the moment outside support steps back - takes time, capacity, and trust built slowly.

Gladys knew that when she opened a school in her own house. She knows it still.