**1. Introduction**

Zimbabwe, like most southern African countries, currently faces erratic weather patterns amidst a rural population that is highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture for livelihood. The impacts of climate change have become a reality and this scenario calls for urgency in improving rural livelihoods and sustainable community development. There is growing recognition amongst development practitioners, academics, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and funding agencies for innovative approaches to the design and implementation of livelihoods programs that promote resilience among rural communities. Several proposed frameworks are emerging mostly based on improving the adaptive, absorptive, and transformational capacities of vulnerable communities. A key question remains on how such frameworks can be developed into practical programming models for rural development practitioners. Research on the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food systems is not new. In fact, a review of the literature shows that such studies in Zimbabwe and most parts of southern Africa can be traced to the 1980s.

Considerable research has been conducted on the impacts and potential impacts of climate change on Zimbabwean rural households, see, for example, Masiyiwa et al. [1]; Brown et al. [2]; Gwimbi [3]; Mutekwa [4]; Nhemachena and Hassan [5]; Kinuthia [6]; Buckland [7]; Matarira et al. [8]; Downing [9]. Some of the key documented climate change impacts include food insecurity; malnutrition; increases in incidence of drought, extreme temperature fluctuations, unpredictable seasons, reduced run-off necessary to sustain the country's hydro-electric power supply, damage and destruction of infrastructure. There has been an increase in both minimum and maximum temperatures in Zimbabwe. In addition, it is documented that the most adverse impacts of climate change are in the developing world because of geographic exposure, reliance on climate-sensitive sectors, low incomes, and weak adaptive capacity. According to Heltberg et al. [10], most vulnerable households are those with assets and livelihoods exposed and sensitive to climatic risks and who are most dependent or rain-fed agriculture. This paper makes a deliberate departure from the discourse on climate change impacts (which has been given much attention) and focuses on how programs or projects on building community resilience against the impacts of climate change can be facilitated in practice since there is a dearth of such studies.
