CHIPAWO has celebrated two anniversary milestones - its 10th birthday in 1999-2000 and its 15th in 2004-5.

Fifteen years may seem a short time or a long time - depending on how you look at it. From inside it seems an age ago that CHIPAWO started up at one centre with 60 children in Harare. Now 15 years later CHIPAWO is active in 76 centres and works directly with over 3000 children all over Zimbabwe. It is currently negotiating to launch itself internationally. Now 15 years later CHIPAWO operates from three premises and has Finance and Administration and PPR Divisions, a Musical Instrument Manufacturing Project , Wardrobe, Performances Unit , a Media Centre and an Academy and is planning a Children's Arts Development and Entertainment Centre .

Yet. of course, in the history of organisations, 15 years is a very short time - and CHIPAWO still has a long way to go. The following is the story of its childhood years.

The founding and development of CHIPAWO

The Children's Performing Arts Workshop (CHIPAWO) was founded in 1989 by Julie Frederikse, Robert McLaren, Stephen Chifunyise and Farai Gezi, with the objective of enriching the cultural exper­ience of Zimbabwean children by introducing them to the culture and performing arts of Zimbabwe, the region and the continent. The CHIPAWO pedagogy stresses the free expression of the child­ren's creativity and originality and the development of all-round versatility.

The founders of CHIPAWO became its co-ordinators with Frederikse in charge of administration and finance, McLaren drama, Chifunyise dance and Gezi music.

A venue was secured through the kind offices of the Headmaster of Blakiston Primary School in Harare, Mr A.Muzariri. Before the first workshop was to take place at the beginning of the third school term in 1989, a free workshop was held in the Harare Gardens for all those children who were able to come. This workshop demonstrated to everyone involved that children were going to enjoy and benefit greatly from the CHIPAWO concept.

In the first year only the centre at Blakiston Primary School, Harare, was operational and the intake was restricted to children between the ages of 8 and 13. Then gradually infants and youth were admitted into the programme and centres began to be established in pre-schools.

With the help of SIDA a bursary scheme was introduced to enable the children of parents who could not pay, to attend the Blakiston Centre as well as to establish a new centre at Chitsere Primary School in the high-density suburb of Mbare.

All the above centres were attended out of school hours by children from many different schools. This posed various problems and so it was decided to establish centres in schools themselves as part of the extra-curricular programme. The centre at Groombridge Primary School was the first CHIPAWO centre based in a school and serving the children of that school.

Efforts to reach the disadvantaged led to the opening of a centre at the S.O.S. Village, Waterfalls. With the help of World University Service (Canada) another centre was established at the Emerald Hill School for the Deaf.

Of the original co-ordinators, Frederikse left for South Africa and three new co-ordinators were added, namely Munashe Mashiri, University of Zimbabwe graduate and teacher at St George’s College, Clayton Ndlovu, well-known choreographer and lecturer at the Zimbabwe College of Music, both instructors since the early days of CHIPAWO, and Stephen Chigorimbo, who was brought in as co-ordinator with special responsibility for film, television and video after the production of the television series "Welcome to CHIPAWO" in 1995.