our story
Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe (LCDZ) (formerly known as Leonard Cheshire Homes Zimbabwe) is an experienced non-profit organization in disability inclusion. It takes a rights-based, holistic, gender-sensitive and disability inclusive- responsive programming. For more than 10 years, LCDZ has been championing high impact adaptive programmes that have shifted the approach to disability work in Zimbabwe. Our strengths remain at the grassroots.
LCDZ started operating in Zimbabwe in 1981. Leonard Cheshire services were started in 1948 by a British World War II Group Captain Veteran, Lord Leonard Cheshire of Woodhall-UK. Realizing that the needs of disabled people were not being me, he started establishing homes for them in the UK. His idea later on saw the establishment of Cheshire Homes for disabled people across the globe. Today, Leonard Cheshire organizations are operating in 54 countries with the International Secretariat based in the UK.
In Zimbabwe Leonard Cheshire was started by an Irish Catholic priest, who got the idea from his experience in the UK. It began with two residential homes, one for adults and the other for children. They were housed on a temporary basis pending their rehabilitation. Following the global change in the approach to disability with the advent of the UNCRPD in 2006, and the shift from institutionalization in 2008, LCDZ made a decision to wind up all residential facilities and applied its resources to non-residential and outreach programs focusing on persons with disabilities of all genders and age groups.