APRIL 2005 - REPORT TO THE GLOBAL BOARD
Progress on our work in Malawi
Epicenter Strategy
THP-Malawi will soon have three major epicenters and two sub-epicenters. The last sub-epicenter at Mpingo was inaugurated in July, 2004, in the presence of Mrs. Joyce Banda, Africa Prize Laureate and Minister of Gender and Community Services; local government officials; the community in the area and staff from THP-Uganda and the Global Office. These epicenters and sub-epicenters serve close to 40,000 villages with more than 200,000 people.
THP Malawi continues to expand its work by mobilizing even more rural partners to work together in cooperative work implementing SPIA work on the ground for the end of hunger and poverty. It is in Malawi that the UN Task Force on Hunger has come to experience the work of THP, its capacity of mobilizing people to work self-reliance, food security and the important role played by the food banks in the epicenters.
As noted by the UN Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force, THP’s epicenters are vital to providing the infrastructure for rural populations to mobilize and work together towards the sustainable end of hunger. In addition to enabling an increase in food production and food security, these epicenters have provided access to health and hygiene education and resources, credit, potable water, agricultural training and food processing techniques, as well as education for children and adult literacy. Based on these results, THP has been asked to be part of the MDG Country Team and participate in the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in Malawi.
Vision, Commitment and Action Workshops: Animator Training
The success of the VCA workshops has greatly contributed to the shift in mindset from believing someone else is responsible for ending hunger to taking full responsibility for the end of hunger in one’s family and one’s village. These results suggest a greater need for VCA workshops in other regions of Africa. Malawi will specifically need further workshops to increase the number of trained animators who work with the rural population to build self-reliance, resulting in food security. THP-Malawi currently has trained 890 animators and plans to train an additional 130 men and women in 2005.
Catalytic projects
Increased Food Production and Food Security
To ensure the availability of food, our partners are working on increasing the production of community gardens, which yield maize, ground nuts, cowpeas and other staple foods. To increase and diversify food production, our partners are introducing a variety of new seeds and nutritional vegetables, goat-rearing, fish ponds and poultry to its efforts.
Food Bank
By storing the community’s excess food in its communal food storage system, called food banks, and by providing proper storage, the communities are secure during droughts and floods. Establishing food banks within the epicenters is a crucial step towards ensuring that our partners do not go hungry during natural disasters or periods of sparse agricultural production. Surplus staple grains, like maize and rice, are kept in the food banks within THP-Malawi’s epicenters, thus ensuring that households have access to basic staple food throughout the year by either securing a loan for the food or paying for it outright.
The food bank is imperative, as Malawi is subject to long dry seasons. The long dry season also results in households going to river banks to grow their food. To dramatically increase the yield from this farming, THP-Malawi has created an irrigation project, using technology such as treadle-pumps, to increase maize and rice production.
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability and
- Develop a global partnership for development
Micro-Credit: epicenter rural bank
THP-Malawi continues to disburse credit, especially through the existing revolving loan fund of AWFFI. The repayment rate of the credit has improved tremendously: while men’s repayment rate is at 70 percent, women, who constitute the bulk of the program, are repaying their loans at a rate of over 95 percent. If this trend continues, we expect one or more of the rural banks to receive government approval to operate as an official financial institution in 2005.
Education and Adult Literacy
In the last three quarters, each of THP-Malawi’s epicenters and sub-epicenters has increased their functional adult literacy (FAL) program for men and women. All epicenters teach their literacy programs in the local language of Chichewa, which we view as important to the empowerment of our partners. The adult literacy program is designed for the education of men and women; however, primarily women are attending the reading and writing classes.
This program has had a tremendous impact on the confidence of its students. The literacy classes use real-life applications as well as important health-related information, especially maternal heath care and hygiene. The women specifically have shown great pride in their ability to read, write, and record their earnings in their savings and credit books.
THP-Malawi has acquired teaching materials from the government and they have established seven literacy centers. The literacy classes are conducted by Hunger Project animators. THP-Malawi has trained over 200 teachers and animators to teach in the local languages and has produced a total of almost 500 literate men and women.
In addition to these literacy classes, THP-Malawi also runs a nursery school program where an average of 50 children, both boys and girls, are attending every day. The children receive a nutritious daily meal in each THP-Malawi epicenter composed of Soya porridge, milk and tea.
Health and Hygiene
Each epicenter has addressed important health issues through the creation of a health clinic, HIV/AIDS program, and the training of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). Health officials in THP-Malawi have already trained 40 TBAs and plan to train 30 health officials to ensure adequate qualified health professionals for the epicenters. The work of the midwives, TBAs, and Drug Revolving workers (mini-pharmacists) has resulted in the reduction of the infant mortality rate in the epicenters’ villages. These programs have facilitated the birth of 40 children in two years, without a single child dying at birth.
In addition to this program, THP-Malawi has embarked – with the partnership of UNICEF – on a new initiative to eradicate malaria through an anti-malaria bed-net program. THP-Malawi provides its partners with a loan with which to buy and sell bed-nets at a very low price. Currently, a total of 1,353 nets have been sold, dramatically reducing the incidence of malaria in several villages.
Another program is a drug-revolving program where our partners are trained by a government hospital to make medications available to villages located very far from the epicenters as part of a mobile pharmacy. This program is not as effective as THP-Malawi wants it to be because the government’s District Heath Office does not supply the needed drugs on a regular basis to our partner who have taken up the implementation of this program.
This program is also focused on the supply of potable and safe drinking water.
HIV/AIDS program
THP-Malawi is very excited about a female-condom initiative which started when the women demanded access to the female condom after seeing a demonstration in the “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop,” which was launched in the epicenters in 2003. To respond to the demand, THP-Malawi developed a dynamic partnership with the United Nations Population Fund to provide condoms, especially the female condom, to people in the Epicenters. To date, over 10,000 female condoms have been acquired by the partners, and the stocks that THP-Malawi receives are depleted as soon as they are received in the Epicenters.
Another important impact of the “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop” was that of all the men participating in the workshops, only 16 percent of them were able to demonstrate correct use of the male condom. Even woman do not know how to correctly use a male condom because they were regarded as the man’s responsibility and any woman seen with a male condom was considered a prostitute.
In our workshops today, more than 90 percent of both men and women are able to demonstrate correct use of the male condoms. As a result, THP-Malawi reports, the belief that “male condoms are men’s issue only” has now been completely wiped out in the epicenters and sub-epicenters.
THP-Malawi is conducting VCA workshops every month in all its epicenters and sub-epicenters. It will have soon 130 specialized trained animators, and already more than 50,000 people have participated at the various workshops.
In addition, traditional practices harmful to women and girls have come to the surface in the discussions that come about during the “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop” and this has created the opportunity to seek solutions and alternatives. THP-Malawi periodically brings a number of women together for a discussion on the dangers of the various harmful practices. Under such guidance, most of the elderly women who were supporting these harmful practices have now stopped them altogether.
In addition to these literacy classes, THP-Malawi runs also a program of nursery school where an average of 50 children, both boys and girls are attending school every day. The children receive a nutritious daily meal in each THP-Malawi epicenter composed of Soya porridge, milk and tea.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
The United Nations Millennium Project has created a Country team to achieve the following goals by the year 2015:
The Hunger Project has been working in Malawi for the past five years, with similar goals in order to achieve the end of hunger and eradicate poverty in all its epicenters.
As a member of the UN Hunger Task Force, The Hunger Project has now made the achievement of the MDGs a priority of its work in all the countries where we have programs. Accordingly, our Country Director in Malawi is now working closely with the Ministry of Rural Development and UNDP to include THP-Malawi as a full member of the Country Team in Malawi charged with task of achieving the MDGs by the year 2015.