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By Ross Moyo
The numbers were muddy, the mission was crystal clear.
Today on Saturday, at the 14th Husqvarna Mud Run at Harare’s Donnybrook’s 4×4 Club, KidzCan Zimbabwe set a new target: $70,000 — up from $61,106 raised last year.
Speaking to TechnoMag, Charity Kawadza, Health and Awareness Coordinator for KidzCan, explained why the increase is not about numbers, but about survival.
“Collaboration with Husqvarna. So, the big, big partner in this event is Husqvarna. And they called in other partners who have contributed towards the success of the event,” she said. “Why should we be doing this? Because children need support. Because the disease called cancer is very, very expensive. Medication is expensive.”
That expense is the core of Zimbabwe’s childhood cancer crisis. Zimbabwe launched its Childhood Cancer Treatment Guidelines at KidzCan’s Rainbow Village, at a time when children with cancer have only a 20 percent survival rate — well below the World Health Organization (WHO) 2030 target of 60 percent. Sources working with children estimate mortality numbers are in the region of 75%.
KidzCan, founded in 2003 by a childhood cancer survivor, now supports 300 to 400 children in active treatment per year — defined as children receiving chemotherapy every 3 to 6 weeks — plus hundreds more on surveillance who need scans to check if the tumour shrank, grew, or resisted.
“If we don’t treat the cancer, then our children do not survive. The good news about childhood cancer is a number of children can survive childhood cancer,” Charity said. “We are really putting all our efforts to make sure that children who got cancer are supported.”
WHERE THE MUD MONEY GOES
Charity broke down the budget with surgical precision — something no annual report does on camera:
1. Chemotherapy Drugs — Free: “As KidzCan, we support children with chemotherapy drugs. That’s the main one… When we give to patients, we do not charge. It’s all free of charge.”
2. Diagnostics — The Hidden Killer: “You cannot treat something that you do not know what it is… Investigation in cancer, blood, tissue samples, scans, x-rays.” Costs: Chemotherapy cycle $100 to $300 depending on cancer type, CT scan about $200, MRI — the big one — about $1,500.
3. The Hope Away From Home: To stop treatment abandonment, KidzCan built a halfway home. “We call it a hope away home… We have 24 rooms… When they are at the home, everything they get is free of charge. We do not charge anybody.” The Rainbow Children’s Village is a partnership between Round Table Zimbabwe who donated land, Meikles Foundation, and KidzCan. It has capacity for 24 patients and 24 caregivers at any time, for as long as treatment requires — treatment that can stretch 2-3 years.
4. Bus Fare — The Reason Children Die: “We support children with bus fare. Whether they’re coming from Karoi, Murewa, Gweru, Chinhoyi… We discovered that people were not coming because they didn’t have bus fare… So now the problem is to support with bus fare.”
5. Counselling & Play Therapy: “This is a very important part… most people when they hear about cancer, it’s a shock… So it’s important to give them adequate counselling… Then, of course, we also support with play therapy… Children need to be allowed to be children. Even if they’ve got cancer.”
In 2024-2025 alone, KidzCan facilitated 5,529 prescriptions, 2,240 phone calls to caregivers, and 460 support groups at hospital and Rainbow Village.
“You don’t know what you’ve done. By you coming, getting the status you want in the mud, but at the same time supporting a very, very noble cause,” Charity told the crowd.
Her target: “We’re hoping we can hit the target of $70,000 this year… If we can raise more, more children can come to us. And that will be a blessing.”
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