Malawi

Centre for Alternatives for Victimised Women and Children

The Centre for Alternatives for Victimised Women and Children (CAVWOC) is one of very few NGOs in Malawi that is headed by a woman, a fact that is symbolically important to this organization’s mission to empower women and children who have suffered from violence and disease, and to promote human rights for all.

CAVWOC works in three districts of southern Malawi and benefits about 50,000 people annually. With support from the SLF, CAVWOC aims to uplift the lives of people living with HIVby improving their economic well-being as well as their knowledge of human rights, gender rights, and sexual and reproductive health. The project involves community outreach and sensitization, the formation of men-to-men HIV-prevention groups, support groups for people living with HIV, and the strengthening of income-generating activities. CAVWOC applies a participatory rights-based approach to all of its training activities, as well to its village savings and loan programs. In addition, CAVWOC helps the local communities with whom it works to identify the root causes of problems they face, and then identify and implement solutions using the resources they have available. To achieve these objectives, the SLF also covers some monitoring, evaluation and administrative costs.

Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation

The Centre traces its origins to a group of students who fled President Banda’s 30-year political dictatorship of Malawi in the 1970s. While in exile, group members devoted their energies to persuading the international community that Malawi’s government must change its domestic policies and improve its record on human rights and gender equality.

Upon returning home in 1994, the group decided to create an organization that could address issues of democracy and human rights from inside the country. At the same time, they realized another huge fight required their attention: the devastation in Malawi caused by HIV/AIDS.  Foremost among their concerns are the stigma and discrimination that continue to render girls and women particularly vulnerable to HIV and its consequences, including the lack of property rights and inheritance that discriminate against widows. With SLF support, the Centre uses public debates, community forums and creative media (drama, songs, poems, dances) to build awareness and help promote the rights of all women, especially those living with HIV. They are also committed to enhancing local women’s capacity for advocacy, lobbying skills and networking, and to improving health outcomes through education and nutritional support.

Consol Homes Orphan Care

Consol Homes Orphan Care works to promote community participation in the care of orphans and other vulnerable children for their social, economic and academic advancement. The organization supports over 100 childcare centres serving approximately 30,000 children, thanks in part to over 520 community volunteers who cover 1,200 villages near Lilongwe and Ntchewu. In partnership with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Consol Homes is providing nutritional support and educational assistance to school-going children and their caregivers, to the chronically ill, and to grandmothers.

Currently, this partnership has several objectives:

• All children should have food to eat on a daily basis: Children attending the child-care centres receive food on-site; other vulnerable children benefit from communal gardens and take-home food supplements.
• All children should go to school: Although not all needy children can be assisted, those in greatest need are identified for tuition subsidies and support, especially in the higher grades where the costs are often prohibitive to poor families.
• All children should develop a sense of responsibility and self-reliance: One of Consol Homes’ most innovative programmes promotes various child-led self-help initiatives that foster respect within the community and provide a sense of pride and accomplishment amongst the children. SLF funding supports various initiatives such as communal gardens, house repairs by the children for elderly persons, construction of a childcare centres using local materials, etc. As a reward, each year Consol Homes holds an eight-day sports festival for all of the children involved.
• Critical needs should be met: Consol Homes provides training, agricultural inputs, infant-feeding formula and emergency assistance to especially vulnerable households that volunteers identify, for example child-headed households or those headed by sick widows or grandmothers.

Finally, the SLF assists Consol Homes by strengthening their administrative capacity, supporting the salaries of several staff, repairing volunteer bicycles, and helping their board with planning and oversight.

Friends of AIDS Support Trust

By working with local traditional leaders, community stakeholders and caregivers, Friends of AIDS Support Trust aims to strengthen the capacity of community members to provide care and support for families affected by HIV. The SLF assists the Friends of AIDS Support Trust in its Nyankhombo Project, whose name means “rescuer” in Chichewa. This is because the organization hopes that they will be able to help rescue grandmothers from the heavy burden they bear in caring for their grandchildren.

The organization trains grandmothers to provide psychosocial support for the orphans in their care and in the community at large. By way of follow-up, project staff and volunteers conduct weekly support visits and regularly hold meetings with community stakeholders. With SLF support, Friendsof AIDS Support Trust also gives nutrition parcels, limited medical support and health education to needy grandmothers. Orphans and vulnerable children receive food, clothing and shelter in addition to health care, educational support, emotional and spiritual guidance and vocational advice. Lastly, volunteers are trained in psychosocial support and counselling, which helps them support the families they visit and monitor the quality of care provided.

Hope for the Elderly

Ageing has a woman’s face in Malawi, as in most countries, but too often the old women are crippled by poverty and the burden of having to care for grandchildren whose parents have died, usually due to HIV. Even without their care-giving responsibilities, these elderly grandmothers face problems related to food insecurity, deteriorating health, lack of proper housing, and a lack of clothing, blankets and other necessities. At precisely the time of their lives when they should (finally) be in a position to have others care from them, they now find themselves having to stretch the little they have to support others.

Hope for the Elderly was founded in 2004 to bring relief to Malawi’s elderly population. The SLF helps in 13 villages by supporting granny peer-groups for moral and social support, training on HIV prevention and human rights (particularly, to reduce the elders’ vulnerability to discrimination), and for the distribution of necessities that improve their quality of the elders’ lives. The material support consists of items that were requested by the old women – i.e. aspirin and other over-the-counter painkillers to reduce their body aches, soap for bathing, a blanket as bedding, and salt and sugar to add to their daily staple of maize-meal and tea. As an income-generating project, the village women have joined in running a store. To help those women whose houses have leaks when it rains, SLF supports Hope for the Elderly in a programme of roof-repairs, using plastic sheets and straw-thatch. The SLF also supports the organization’s administration and staff allowances.

Kanengo AIDS Support Organization (KASO)

KASO is a grassroots organization working with support groups and communities in rural villages in Malawi’s Lilongwe and Dowa districts. Founded in 1997 by people living with HIV and AIDS, the organization has provided positive living, health, school fees, childcare and household support to over 300 adults, 200 children and 4,000 orphans infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. 

With SLF support, KASO provides income generation training, start-up capital, guidance and monitoring for 100 women and grandmothers and 50 HIV-positive women to start their own small businesses. In addition, KASO supports 12 peer support groups for people living with HIV and AIDS and 12 grandmother groups where members receive counselling, HIV/AIDS education and treatment adherence training. Thirty support group members also receive special training for palliative and psychosocial care for women living with AIDS, home-based care kits and food support. KASO provides bicycles for the home-based caregivers to make home visits to KASO clients. Support from SLF is also used to fund school fees and related costs for 36 secondary school children as well as some staff and administrative costs.

Nancholi Youth Organization

Nancholi Youth Organization started in April 2004 as a youth club. They currently work in 16 villages with twelve youth groups and two community-based child care centres, plus 175 home-based care volunteers who visit local families that are affected by HIV and other serious illnesses. 

The SLF assists Nancholi Youth Organization by building the capacity of its members and volunteers to ensure quality services, promote HIV/AIDS education in the community, and provide basic care and support services to people living with HIV and their household members.  Since its inception, Nancholi Youth Organization has received support from local traditional authorities; now twenty-five key community leaders are helping to mobilise additional community support. Nancholi’s capacity building involves training in project management and home-health care. For the first time, volunteers are now receiving t-shirts and other small incentives to facilitate their work. Additionally, four staff members receive allowances. People who are living with HIV are now participating in periodic “group therapy” sessions with a special focus on healthy eating using local foods. Some HIV-affected households also receive farming inputs.

Women’s Legal Resources Centre (WOLREC)

Women’s Legal Resources Centre (WOLREC) aims to increase women’s and girls’ access to justice, which the organization’s founders describe as having three angles: legal, social and economic. They address the first through legal aid and legal education; the second through gender and human rights sensitisation (especially around issues of gender-based violence, harmful traditional practices, and HIV); and the third by trying to alleviate poverty.

The SLF supports WOLREC in their efforts in Salima District to enhance the wellbeing of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) and their family members, starting with programmes of treatment literacy, counselling and positive living. They advocate for the full participation of PLWHA in community life, including equal access to money-lending and employment opportunities. In households where people living with the virus are so poor that they are forced to take their HIV treatments without eating any food, WOLREC provides nutritional supplements. The organization also advocates for stigma reduction, increased uptake of voluntary counselling and testing, and improved coordination amongst NGOs and government institutions. 

In order to provide meaningful support and reach the largest constituency possible, WOLREC relies on local community-based volunteers who live and work at the village-level, and who provide information, referral, emotional support, and drugs for opportunistic infections. To help these volunteers do their work, SLF funding ensures the purchase of bicycles and home-based care supplies for each village. Volunteers also receive training and promotional items such as umbrellas and tee-shirts, and they participate in learning exchanges with other organizations.

• Project descriptions last updated April 2011