Malawi fund
Shopping for Malawi support chitenge bookmark
Our staff member is working in Malawi to improve local people’s live as JOCV (Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer) from February 2015.
※please have a look here about Republic of Malawi
・Ministry of foreign affairs of Japan – Republic of Malawi
http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/malawi/
・Republic of Malawi ambassador official website in Japan
http://www.malawiembassy.org/jp/
・Here is Goole map of Malawi in English
Republic of Malawi is located in south part of Africa and landlocked country put among Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. The land area is 118,480km²(this size is like putting Kyushu and Hokkaido together. Lake Malawi occupies 20% of this country). Population is 16,363,000(based on United Nations 2013).
GDP is 5,146 mil.US $ :160 / 213 nations (based on United Nations 2013), GDP per person is 315 US＄:211 / 213 nations(based on United Nations 2013). This shows this country is one of the world’s poorest country.
Rural area is much poor than urban area, and it’s inadequate not only for tangible side like infrastructure but also for intangible side like socialized medicine system.
80% of population is farmers, but irrigation scheme is poor because this country is the landlocked country. Also they depend on rainwater too much for agriculture. This circumstance triggers off want of food easily once disaster happens. Last year maize, Malawian staple food (a variety of corn) ran short due to lack of rain, so Malawi government announced they would import maize from foreign country and conducted urgent aid to the Malawi nation.
Continual poverty like this is throughout this country. So the activity of our staff member is to improve the local life through income generating for resident group.
Concretely the local residents in an area gather together and save money little by little, and doing business with those money in her working place Rumphi (located in north part of Malawi). But those are just local businesses, so most of them are small scale like sales of farm products.
Lots of changes are arising to resident’s lives by her income generating activity. For example some got to be able to let her child go to school, other women got to have right to decide in their home and other member and their family got better immunity. All those are called “Basic Needs”, which is minimum requirements for human determined by United Nations.
This time our staff member is planning to give each groups several trainings for group dynamic and business management. She is making use of strong points of her working office DCDO (District Community Development Office). She expects residents to get good teamwork and basic business skills and she wants to lead them to their sustainable income generating activity through these training.
Though most officers of DCDO are good at facilitation, they can’t carry out these trainings because of budget deficit. Also, there is a lot of needs for infrastructure, like shortage of the number of classroom in elementally school and teaching materials everywhere.
We established “Malawi Fund” to meet those needs. Your support for this fund is always appreciated.
Malawi fund
1. Disaster relief
Location: Places along the Shire River in Phalombe, Mulanje and Chikwawa district
Target: The community and people who are affected by floods
Details: Along the Shire River, they experience floods every year. People and houses are affected. So we are planning to give the victims food, clothing and necessities as soon as possible after the disaster happens. Further, these victims need to regain their socio-economic statuses. We are therefore planning to have a program that can enable them start income generating activities (IGAs). We will help them through guidance as well as capacity building in Business Management and savings and investments.
Period: When the disaster happens
2. Youth support
Location: Rumphi district
Target: The boys and girls who graduate from secondary school and are jobless, Secondary school students who need support for schooling and their life at home.
Detail: In Malawi, the employment rate is very low. As a result most young people of ages 16-35 are finding it difficult to get income even though they graduate from secondary school. In this project, this project will support them to start business or go to vocational training centre to learn the skills needed to get a job such as ICT. The project will use Village Development Committees to identifying the beneficiaries and mentoring sessions for up to 3 months will commence. These mentoring sessions will aim at boosting the beneficiaries esteem to choose their careers and occupations. These will guide us to know their next step i.e. where to attach them.
In addition, we have started supporting WOCA football academy in Rumphi District at May in 2016. WOCA Football Academy is a program initiated by a group of football loving Malawians resident in Rumphi District, which is located in the Northern region of Malawi, Central Africa. The whole thing was basically motivated by the fact most young people in the district are engaging in risky and unproductive behaviors that can put their lives and future in danger. With football being the main meaningful sporting activity with huge potential to attract many young people, it was decided that an academy that can contribute towards reducing youth immorality as well as developing grassroot talent.
Period: All year
3. Orphan support
Location: Rumphi district
Target: Orphanns and vulnerable children who does not belong to Community Based Care Centre (CBCC).
Detail: Due to the pandemic AIDS and low expectance rate Malawi has a lot of orphans and vulnerable children. CBCC supports orphan under 5 and a lot of organization are supporting CBCC. However, a lot of orphan over 6 are not supported by any organization and can’t go to primary school. We therefore target this group of kids of 6 -10 years. The projects activities include, supporting the households from which these kids are coming from with farm inputs to improve their food security. It will also involve supporting these kids with basic necessities for their academic life. These include school uniforms, exercise books, pens e.t.c.
Period: All year
4. Primary school empowerment(Support)
Location: St.Denis primary school, Bumba primary school, RU2 primary school in Rumphi district
Target: All of the students in the schools
Detail: In Rumphi district, there are 3 public primary schools as listed above. They have problems such as lack of stationery, art material, text book, table, chair and sports goods and so on that makes a bad environment for the students to study. We provide necessaries requested by the teachers. So far we have assisted these schools with drawing materials costing to MK199.130 (≒US＄334) from the first funds we received last month.
Period: All year
Available bank account and a shop for the donation
■Japan
1. Bank deposit
Japan Post Bank
1-1. From Japan Post Bank
Simbol: 12380 Number: 5380671 Account name: そっと応援する会マラウイ(Sotto Ouensurukai Malawi)
1-2. From other banks
Shop name: 238 Shop number: 238 Type: an ordinary deposit Account number: 0538067
Excuse us that we ask to bear the charges for transfer.
When you would donate us, we would like you to send E-mail at the same time so that we could express our gratitude to you. Also, the activities in Malawi could be better with hearing your question and requests.
[E-mail address]
http://kirikiriouen.jimdo.com/contact/?logout=1
2. Purchase the goods of Malawi
2-1. Home-roasted coffee shop KANOKO
Address: Zip cord 410-0878, 383-1, Imazawa, Numazu city, Shizuoka, Japan
Tel/Fax: 055-969-2830/055-969-2831
Opening hours: 10:00-20:00
Holiday: None
Home page: http://cafe-kanoko.com/
Goods：Malawian coffee beans “Geisha”
They donate 30 yen from a cup of coffee (530 yen) and 30 yen from 100g coffee beans (680yen) to Malawi Fund.
They have supported our activity very much. They have made the donation box at the store in “one coin campaign to raise funds”. Also, they also have played a role to recommend charity T-shirt in “Charity T-shirt Project”. Now they kindly start supporting “Malawi Fund”.
2-2. Income generating activity (IGA) goods
The staffs in Malawi are involved with some IGA groups which produce a purse, bag, pouch, belt and sweets by local materials. If you are interested in those goods, please send us a message by email.
■Malawi
1. Bank deposit
Malawi Saving Bank
Rumphi Branch
Saving Account
Account Name: MINPA
Account number: 202-5421698-001
The transfer is accepted only in Malawi by local currency, Kwacha.
2. Purchase the goods of Malawi
Income generating activity (IGA) goods
The staffs in Malawi are involved with some IGA groups which produce a purse, bag, pouch, belt and sweets by local materials. If you are interested in those goods, please send us a message by email.
We would be pleased to receive your idea, comment and question.
Please feel free to email us. Email: minpa.missionandpartner@gmail.com
In Malawi 300 yen can be the meal cost for 10people a day. So your donation can surely help them. I promise you to use that donation properly and report the uses on HP and Facebook. We would sincerely appreciate your cooperation.
（Click to enlarge the photo）
Hope for Malawi through “Malawi Fund”
This is the message of our staff member working in Malawi below.
August in 2015, half a year passed after I came Malawi. I have had an experience I stayed abroad before, but I come across a lot of troubles often here because of the difference of culture and living custom. Nevertheless thanks to friends in japan, local colleagues and friends in Malawi, JICA staff, all helping me, I’m realized to do my best here now.
Based on my local survey here over six months, I found Malawi is always in continual poverty. I can guess the causes of this poverty. One of them is unstable of the political situation because most part of a government budget depends on foreign country and assistance organizations. Unpaid salary to civil servant often happens here. Also most of the total population in Malawi are farmers so this country has less chance to provide industry. It makes it difficult overwhelmingly for Malawi people to find employment.
You can see easily many holes on ceiling in public office, there are no desks and chairs in schools around my working place. In such a situation, my assignment is income generating for resident groups. They keep trying to look for new resource of earnings through the group saving which they contribute from their low income. Their characteristic side is that they think not from individual point of view but from community point of view. Therefore they have strong team spirit and sometimes I have been astonished. They are trying to get forward slowly like this, so I want to do whatever I can in this country.
These below are outlines of groups I work with now.
Student group: they are producing and selling small articles by sewing skills the former volunteer taught.
1. Woman group: they are planning to build a bread factory based on their saving money and assistance from domestic organization.
2. Woman group: they develop the sweets made of local diet by some knowledge NGO taught them before and they are selling them now
3. A group by Lake Malawi: they want to focus on fishing after buying a small ship by their saving.
4. Three primary schools in my local area
These are my concrete activities below.
○Carrying out several training, group dynamics, business management and improving products
○Monitoring loan and saving activity groups
○Collecting necessary materials
○Increasing children’s chance for studying
It is out of my office’s territory about increasing children’s chance for studying, but Malawi emphasizes on much of an academic background more than Japan. If children can’t study enough at school under unstable education situation, it is difficult for them to go to a higher school although their parents earn money. Therefore I will focus on education for local children’s hopeful future.
I will surely return profit to Malawi from your cooperation and donation. Please give me your warm support, thank you.
August in 2015
Mio Kamiyanagi, Joint representative at Sotto Ouensurukai
26-3 Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer, Community Development Officer, Rumphi in Malawi
This is the blog written by our staff in Malawi.
This is the photo album of people and scenery in Malawi. Please enjoy a small country, Malawi in Africa.
（Click to enlarge the photo）
The children in a tobacco fields. It is said that Malawi is one of the poorest country but their main industry of growing tobacco is still there. I was happy to see them because this picture may show us the future with full of hopes for Malawi. (March, 2015, taken by our staff)