Building Futures Together: Halfway Milestones in Transforming Lives in Malawi

Status on how far we reached in the projects

I started my mission in NHQ Dapp Malawi in 10th of july 2024.
Since that I got some general overview on 4 different area spending different time in:

Schools Programme:
At the school programme we got a knowledge the main challenges of the schools, (high drop out rate, lack of teachers, incredible huge number of children in classes, lack of material of classes /desks, books/, lack of motivation of parents to send children to the school, lack of motivation of children to learn /based the lack of knowledge about the world around/, lack of teachers house, lack of the money for food /only one porrage at the morning/.

We (Sergio, Rodrigo, me) shut short movie with the Senior Chef who made a speech empower the parents to send the children to the school. This 4 minutes movie is done, sent to hundreds of teachers who hopefully can show on open days of the schools.

We also started to shot a second movie – directly to the children – with “successful people” (managers, policeman, doctor, etc.) who talk about the importancy of learning. This video is under construction, some key report is missing than we can put the film together.

Now I have a plan to take schoolchildren to the close city (Blantyre) to show them well organised offices, a restaurant, a lodge, a well run farm to see the power of knowledge.
This programme in under acceptation.

Reducing Tuberculosis (TB Loan):
I spent only one day with this programme, saw how the volunteers visit all the huts/families in rural areas, how they detect the disaster with a questionary and how they sing the houses with chalks.

Male circumcision programme Kutetesa:
The main goal of this programme is to reduce cervical cancer and HIV by cutting the foreskin of the penis of the young men. We visited hospitals where this operation take place, we get knowledge about the challenges of it.

Macadamia project:
The macadamia nut is a really valuable, profitable, exportable agriproduct what can give income to the country in hard currency. We can say it is one of the very few exportable product of Malawi (with the tea, coffee, tobacco, cotton and sugar).
We visited local farms and the agro communities who has connection to each other.

DREAMS project:
-This program is formed to reduce HIV. I spent the most time with this project. The general idea behind this project is the simple recognition – based on statistics – that the most vulnerable group affected by HIV are the rural young woman, – so the programme DREAMS targets them.
The programme has a lots of legs, depending of the age of the girls, divide them to age groups, and educate them by their level. (recognising the signs of the abuse, learning the basic financial/entrepreneurial knowledge, educate some basic vocational knowledge, donating them goats, chickens and porks for financial empowerment).

Team: Sergio and Rodrigo

Macadamia trees