First anniversary of ADRA Malawi Today

May 6, marks the first anniversary of ADRA Malawi Today. During this year of existence, www.adramalawi.blogspot.com published 47 stories, and had, on average, close to 5 different visitors a day in a total of 1676 visitors during the 12 months.

The top 5 countries reading ADRA Malawi Today where: Malawi, United States of America, United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia; 107 different countries were recorded as visiting at least once our blog. Other than Malawi the African country with the most recorded visits was South Africa.

The map above shows the visitors locations during the last 12 months.

The Global ADRA Network

ADRA Malawi is part of the international ADRA net-work. ADRA is a non-governmental organization present in 125 countries providing sustainable community development and disaster relief without regard to political or religious association, age, gen-der, race or ethnicity.

ADRA Malawi receives support from several ADRA offices and foreign governments including Denmark, Australia, Sweden, USA and Canada, and UN agencies. ADRA Malawi works in partnership with the Government of Malawi to reach Development Goals.

For further information please visit: ADRA International at http://www.adra.org/, ADRA Denmark at http://www.adra.dk/, ADRA Australia at http://www.adra.org.au/, ADRA Sweden at http://www.adra.se/, ADRA Canada at http://www.adra.ca/, ADRA UK at http://www.adrauk.org/.

Empowering Women Essential to Successful Community Development

While gender equity and women’s empowerment is now widely held as essential to reducing poverty, a disproportionately high number of women and girls around the world are still subject to the effects of discrimination, poverty, and illiteracy, said the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).

In Malawi, where female-headed households are among the poorest in the country, ADRA is helping women overcome these obstacles through the Women Empowerment Project (WEP), an initiative whose main goal is to empower women by promoting their rights and health status, and encourage self-supporting income generating initiatives. By April of 2009, ADRA expects that some 5,000 people will have benefited directly and another 15,000 indirectly in communities in the Mulanje district of southern Malawi. Women currently head many of the targeted households, while at least 81 percent of the indirect beneficiaries are women and children.

“The proposed project will help men see women as partners in development, without whom society is not complete,” said Per Bolling, project officer for ADRA Sweden, about the inclusion of men in the project. “This will also help improve the marital relations among targeted men and women, a factor that has proven successful among other rural families.”

Through the WEP, members benefit from group discussions, theater, and door-to-door visits that highlight issues that are important to them, such as gender and human rights, adult literacy, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, clean water, home gardening, animal husbandry, and additional livelihood activities.

The project is targeting 1,000 households in 20 villages, with each village receiving a water well. Through the installation of wells, women, who are the primary water-collectors, have additional time to participate in literacy training, home gardening, and other project activities.

“People are now able to envision their future in a more positive way, and identify and advocate for the issues that directly affect them,” said Andiyesa Mhango, WEP project manager for ADRA Malawi.

Due to its success, this two-year project has been extended for two more years, said Emanuel da Costa, country director for ADRA Malawi.

The project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the Swedish Mission Council, and ADRA Sweden.

Since 1982, ADRA Malawi has been working in the areas of disaster relief, water and sanitation, HIV and AIDS, family planning, agriculture, primary health, basic education, and empowerment of vulnerable groups, such as women and children.

ADRA is a non-governmental organization present in 125 countries providing sustainable community development and disaster relief without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race or ethnicity.

For more information about ADRA, visit http://www.adra.org/.

Author: Nadia McGill
ADRA International

A step towards a better future: The case of one orphan in Neno district

Agnes Mc Donald dropped out of school in standard 4 when she became orphaned and had no support to continue with her education. Her ambition was to become a medical doctor but her fate saw this dream slowly slip down the drain.

Born fifth in a family of six children in Joliji Village, T/A Chekucheku Neno, Agnes’s story is like just like may others’ in the district and the country at large. Some of Agnes’s older siblings have moved elsewhere to earn a living, leaving her with the responsibility to fend for food and other basic necessities. She is still holding on to her dream of getting educated and having a productive life although she does not have an immediate solution to her problem.
The ADRA IHFS project, with funding from Danida came in to assist young people like Agnes with their problem by training them in vocational skills so that they can have better means of generating income for their households and their education. A total of 65 child household heads and orphans have been trained for four months in skills like tinsmith, tailoring, carpentry and joinery and bricklaying in Mulanje and Neno districts. The beneficiaries also received training in entrepreneurship and small scale business management.

In order not to kill the dream that Agnes and many other children in her situation may have of becoming future leaders and professionals, the project established links with government department of youth as well as department of social welfare for these children to be supported and encouraged to go back to school. Today Agnes is a fully trained and certified tailor by the national certification body. She planned to back to school and make items to sell in her free time instead of spending all her time looking for piece work in people’s garden. It is the hope of ADRA Malawi that the skills imparted in these young boys and girls will sooner or later prove vital in their lives and that they will be able to develop their own lives as well as their communities.

Author: Thoko Mwapasa

Life Skills Clubs

Eight schools, in T/A Njolomole of Ntcheu district in Malawi, participated in ADRA LICEN Project quiz competition in February and March 2009.

The objective was to encourage the spirit of learning and technology adoption through participatory approaches in agriculture, home economics, craft work, gender, HIV and AIDS and Children Rights.

The quiz finals took place on March 5th at Gowa Full Primary School. The schools competing in the finals were Thanganyika, Kampanje and Muwalo.
Thanganyika school emerged winners at with 37 points amassed as compared to 17 for Kampanje and 10 for Muwalo.

The National Radio one of Malawi Broadcasting Corporation covered the proceedings at the finals.
In attendance were the District Education Manager for Ntcheu, District Information Officer, District Youth Officer, Primary Education Advisor, reverends, head teachers, teachers, school committee members, parents and pupils from the 3 contesting schools and the hosting venue.

These activities where funded by ADRA Australia and the Australian Government.

Author: Francis Zande

ADRA completes successful Food Security Project

ADRA Malawi in partnership with ADRA Denmark, with funding from Danida implemented an Integrated Health and Food Security (IHFS) from 2005 - 2008 in Mwanza and Neno districts of Malawi. Targeting 4,200 poor and vulnerable households affected by HIV/AIDS, the main objective of the project was to improve their general health and household self-sufficiency. This was to be achieved through four strategies aimed at strengthening vulnerable household food security, improving human nutrition and food utilisation, strengthening vulnerable household health and building the capacity of the communities sustain themselves and establish their own development agenda.

The project registered considerable success in the three years of implementation. By the end of the project, agricultural production among the targeted households increased by an average of 62.5% translating into an increase in household food availability. There was also a decrease in number of months that targeted households report food shortage from 8 to an average of 5 months.  As household food production increased the average daily number of meals also increased from 1 to 2.5 between 2004/05 and 2007/08. In the same vein, the project made strides in increasing access to potable water and improving nutrition status of the vulnerable target households through trainings and counseling.

Drawing on lessons from this project a new intervention was designed and funded by ADRA Denmark and DANIDA, the RECAB project (Resilience and capacity building for vulnerable households and communities affected by HIV/AIDS) will focus on building household resilience to cope and recover from stress and shocks on their livelihood strategies. 

Author: Thoko Mwapasa

60 to discuss project achievements, challanges and ways forward

As is the custom in ADRA Malawi, Let’s Fight AIDS in Malawi Project, at the end of each calendar year, over 60 staff from all field and central offices come together to discuss project activities of the year just gone by and project on future events of the next project calendar, in this case 2008, 2009 respectively.

It was encouraging to note that a lot success has been registered in the area of food security which is one of the major components of ADRA Malawi project activities.

Different types of crops which ADRA Office provided to farmers in the seven districts of the impact area promise a high yield. This includes maize, ground nut, pigeon peas, soya beans, cassava and potatoes.

On the area of HIV/AIDS, it was encouraging to learn that people on the grassroots know the basic information about HIV/AIDS which they can use to avoid the contraction of the HI virus. More people are open to talk about their HIV status more especially those that are in support groups as their number increase by day.

Condom usage, both male and female, as a protective measure from HIVirus and STIs and family planning is on the increase as the informed demand in the communities is growing.

The monitoring and evaluation team, shade more light on indicator and progress made so far in achieving project objectives according to ADRA Malawi’s log frame.

In the area of media, that is, television, radio, video shows and community dialogue session, it was learnt that the nation as a whole has significantly profited from these programs. Tikuferanji enjoyed an award from the public Broadcaster, Malawi Broadcasting Cooperation (MBC) for being best radio play elected by the public.

With the video shows ADRA was able to reach out to the most rural areas where information is not easily accessible.

On the other hand, there were some challenges which were faced, erratic rains that destroyed some crops.

Communication processes were also a challenge as information is not able to trickle down to the grassroots as expected. Staff were encouraged to work hard in their different fields and improve at field office level, community level, district level and office level because brings cohesiveness as people work in real partnerships.

Author: Gladys Phiri

Project Communications Assistant