OCTOBER 2005 - REPORT TO THE GLOBAL BOARD
Progress on our work in Malawi
To achieve the eight MDGs, THP-Malawi is currently working in five epicenters, with a new epicenter underway at Ligowe. The epicenters impact more than 250,000 people.
Epicenter Strategy
THP-Malawi continues to expand its work by mobilizing even more rural partners to work together cooperatively to ensure self-reliance and food security resulting in the end of hunger and poverty. It is in Malawi that the UN Millennium Project’s Task Force on Hunger experienced the work of THP, its capacity to mobilize people to work toward self-reliance and food security and the important role played by the food banks in the epicenters.
As noted by the Hunger Task Force, the work of THP is built on the social and physical infrastructure that mobilizes the rural population to work together and to carry out the essential work resulting in self-reliance. These epicenters, in addition to enabling our partners to increase their food production and ensure access to food security at household and community levels, also provide health and hygiene services, credit, safe drinking water, training in agricultural and food processing techniques, as well as education and adult literacy. It is based on these results that THP is now asking to be part and parcel of the Country Team in Africa to participate effectively in the achievement of the UN MDGs.
Food processing facility at Jali Epicenter.
The Visit of President Mutharika
The Head of State of Malawi, President Bingu Mutharika, had expressed the wish to visit one of THP’s epicenters in Malawi. Accordingly, on August 29th, 2005, President Mutharika visited the epicenter of Nsondole accompanied by Mrs. Joyce Banda, Africa Prize laureate and Minister of Gender, Family and Social Affairs in Malawi. On their arrival at the epicenter, they were welcomed by our Country Director, Rowlands Kaotcha and the population of the epicenter. The President visited the small-scale irrigation gardens, the epicenter rural bank, the food bank and he toured the epicenter building itself. In his address to the people gathered there, the President stated how pleased he is with THP and that the work has encouraged him. He said that it has demonstrated how the people of Malawi can rely on their own efforts to fight hunger and poverty.
Vision, Commitment and Action Workshops: Animator Training
The great success we have in our VCA workshops effectively contributes to the transformation of the mind-set of our partners in a way that they are now clear that they can end hunger by working hard and with dignity. As a result, we feel that these workshops are very much needed elsewhere in Malawi, to produce a new group of trained animators to work with the rural population for self-reliance and food security. So far THP-Malawi has trained over 800 animators, both men and women.
THP-Malawi is conducting VCA workshops every month in all its epicenters and sub-epicenters. In total, THP-Malawi has 130 specialized trained animators with over 50,000 people who have participated at the various workshops.
Food Security
Increased Food Production
Our partners are focusing mainly on increased production of food through irrigation schemes and community gardens of staple foods such as maize, ground nuts, and cowpeas to ensure food availability in the food bank of the villages and the epicenters at all times. Efforts toward increased and diversified food production is also supported by introducing newly-improved and effective seeds as well as the establishment of goat and pig rearing, fish farming from fish ponds and poultry.
Food Bank
The food banks are an essential structure to ensure food availability at the epicenters; they are stocked by communities storing the excess food they produce in their communal gardens. As is the case in other countries in Africa, the establishment of a community food bank is a central action toward saving our partners from hunger during droughts, floods and lean period of the year by having proper storage of food. Before going to the market, surplus staple grains such as maize and rice, will be kept in the food banks, which are administered by the epicenter committees. This will enable every household to have access to basic staple food at all times. The food bank is indeed necessary as Malawi is subject to severe floods and a long dry season, which means households often have to go to the river banks to grown maize, the staple food, and vegetables. THP-Malawi has created a very successful irrigation project, which uses the appropriate technology of treadle-pumps to increase production of maize and rice around Nchalo, Jali and the other epicenters.
Food bank at Jali Epicenter. This food came from the community garden,
and is available for lean times between harvests.
Rural Bank for Micro-finance
THP-Malawi has continued to disburse credit, especially through the existing revolving loan fund of AWFFI. The repayment rate of the credit is tremendously improving. Women, who comprise the bulk of the program, are paying their loans at an increasing rate close to 95 percent, while men are trailing with a rate of only 70 percent. It is hoped that by next year, one or two rural banks will be ready to obtain government recognition to operate as official financial institutions in Malawi.
Education and Adult Literacy
In the last three quarters, THP-Malawi has increased the functional adult literacy (FAL) program for men and especially women in each epicenter and sub-epicenter. Literacy classes utilize useful examples to train women to become literate; they also enable women to learn important information in health, especially maternal heath care, and hygiene. This program has a tremendous impact on the confidence of both men and women, especially women who show great pride in their achievement to read and write information in their savings and credit books. Adult literacy programs in all the epicenters in the local language of Chichewa are indeed an important area of work in empowering our partners. THP-Malawi has acquired teaching materials from the government and created seven centers where 117 people, mostly women, are attending reading and writing classes in their own language.
To make it easier for our partners, the literacy classes are conducted by our own animators who are specially trained for this task by THP-Malawi. The teachers and animators who have been trained to teach in local languages have trained close to 500 literate men and women in all the epicenters.
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 school every day. The children receive a nutritious daily meal in each epicenter composed of Soya porridge, milk and tea.
Health and Hygiene
The Health Clinics in each of the epicenters address important health issues in our partners’ communities. Each epicenter has a medical doctor and nurses who are working full time, as well as trainings for Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). THP-Malawi has already trained 40 TBAs and plans to train 30 health officials to ensure that there are adequate qualified health professionals in the epicenter areas. These programs and initiatives ensure that the level of hygiene and health will be improved in these areas in the near future. The work of the midwives, the TBAs and Revolving Drug Workers (mini-pharmacists) has resulted in the reduction of the infant mortality rates in our villages.
Healthy babies born at Jali Epicenter delivered by TBAs.
In addition to this program, THP-Malawi, in partnership with UNICEF, has embarked upon the eradication of malaria through an anti-malaria bed-net program. THP-Malawi provides our partners a loan to buy bed-nets so that they can sell them at a very low price. So far, several hundreds of bed-nets have been sold to the partners and this has dramatically reduced the incidence of malaria in several villages.
Another hygiene program is a drug revolving fund where our partners are trained by a government hospital to sell medication 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 partners who have taken up the implementation of this program.
Trained epicenter volunteers are responsible for portable pharmacies.
Reducing the Spread of HIV/AIDS Program
THP-Malawi’s program of distributing female-condoms to women is very successful. This initiative started two years ago when the women demanded access to the female condom after seeing a demonstration by THP in an “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop.” To respond to the demand, THP-Malawi developed a dynamic partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 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.
As a result of this successful program, THP-Malawi has received two years of financial aid from an Oxfam/Novib program to implement its program of reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. This is a clear and deserved recognition of our methodology and the effective work of THP-Malawi in this domain.
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 taboo of “male condoms are a men’s issue only” has now been completely wiped out in the epicenters and sub-epicenters.
In addition, traditional practices that are harmful to women and girls have come to the surface in the discussions during the “HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop,” thus creating the opportunity to seek solutions and alternatives. THP-Malawi periodically brings together a number of women to discuss the dangers of the various harmful practices. Under such guidance, most of the elderly women who were supporting these harmful practices have gradually abandoned their support.