December, 2024
Dear Friend of Malawi
Year end greetings to everyone in our Friends of Malawi community, and apologies for not being in great contact recently – the National Peace Corps Association made a big transition of website platforms for all its “Friends of….” groups early in the year, and it took quite a while to get our membership lists back on-line. The frustrations sometimes reminded me of my own Peace Corps service in Malawi back in the late nineties – when pre-cell phone days meant communicating only with the simplest methods and the most elaborate patience!
We now think the Friends of Malawi online membership lists are mostly sorted, and are looking forward to being in much better communication this coming year. We do have some updates from the last year that should be of interest, so as the current president of our all volunteer board I’m glad to have this annual report and letter as a chance to let you know what Friends of Malawi has been up to this past year while also sharing some of our plans moving forward.
Our Friends of Malawi plans are always partly oriented by our initial raison d’être – Peace Corps Malawi. On that front, FOM is excited that after a long transitional period of interim leadership, the news from Lilongwe is good: Jean Margaritis started as the new full time Peace Corps Malawi Country Director in October, and is busy working with staff, leadership, and volunteers to make plans for a new period of opportunity after years of adjusting to post-COVID challenges. I had a chance to talk to Jean recently, and was impressed with her vision and enthusiasm – while also admiring the work being done in Malawi to ensure Peace Corps builds on its decades of work in the country. Jean herself is an RPCV who served in Lesotho, and tells me during those days she took an epic multi-day bus trip to visit a PCV friend in Malawi and to canoe on the lake. So she knows the region and the place!
Peace Corps Malawi is currently taking one cohort of about 20 regular two year volunteers each year, primarily in education and health, along with smaller groups of “response” volunteers who usually take one year assignments and start at two different points in the year. Of the volunteers who’ve started recently they’ve had very few “ETs” (early termination of service) – a sign of the commitment of people on the ground. Peace Corps globally is apparently making adjustments to its policies and practices – in part due to a general decrease in people willing to volunteer internationally. But Peace Corps Malawi seems to be using that as an opportunity to think carefully about how they can evolve and do their best work. Examples of current initiatives in Malawi include better integrating environmental work with education and health projects, helping volunteers connect their service with career development (moving from “bucket baths to business cards”), and connecting US PCVs with local volunteers from organizations such as CorpsAfrica. They are also experimenting with doubling the readjustment allowance for volunteers to see if that kind of incentive helps! My conversation with the new Country Director left me quite optimistic that as new volunteers, staff, and leadership settle in to life in Malawi there will be many rich opportunities for thinking anew about what we can all do to serve the people and place that brings us together.
Speaking of people that bring us together, I’m also pleased to report that in the last year we have also been able to restock our Friends of Malawi board with some excellent additions who are connected to different eras of Peace Corps Malawi. I was actually initially connected to the Malawi Country Director by new addition to our FOM board Anna Lundsten – who spent much of the year working in Malawi through Development Aid from People to People after having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Machinga between 2019 and 2020. Anna has now joined the board to help with our communications group, joining another new board addition Vishakha Wavde – who served as a PCV near Mchinji as a health volunteer from 2018 to 2020 and has since done remote communications work for Peace Corps Jamaica. We were also lucky that Patrick Lee, who I met briefly at a Peace Corps training in Malawi for new education volunteers way back in 1998, has joined the board communications team to help us manage our new website. Those three will all join our board communications stalwarts Bright Vandervoet (RPCV 2008-2010) and Sarah Swenson (RPCV 2008-2011 & 2019-2020) to bring you updates and information going forward. Bright has also graciously agreed to serve as board vice-president, so I’m appreciative of that help going forward.
On the grants side of our Friends of Malawi operation, I’ve continued to enjoy working with a board group including Fides Ushe (connected to Peace Corps Malawi since her days as a student at Lilongwe Girls Secondary School), Maurina McClean (Daughter of Janice Makwakwa RPCV Malawi 1965 – 1967), and Shawn Reagan (RPCV 2011-2013). In the last year we focused our small granting on four ongoing partnerships that have proven to be excellent fits for our mission: CorpsAfrica Malawi, Mudzi Connect, the Peace Corps Malawi – Friends of Malawi fund, and Maziko Preschool.
CorpsAfrica has been a key partner in recent years as an organization that originally built off the Peace Corps model with a focus on Malawian and African volunteers who develop small grant proposals as part of their service. In all their projects, CorpsAfrica requires that the community contributes at least 25% of the total cost, with at least 10% being a monetary contribution, and then helps volunteers solicit funds to fill in the remainder.
In 2024 we were so impressed by the CorpsAfrica proposals that Friends of Malawi helped to fund five projects:
- The construction of an under-5 clinic in Chikwawa District through CorpsAfrica volunteer Bernard Mkunthi. As the proposal noted: “By having such a health facility within the reach of the community we will lessen the distance travelled to get maternal health and family planning services in turn, we will lessen the high mortality rate and the cost of traveling. We will also increase children’s nutrition because health officials will be available for nutrition sessions, vaccination, immunization, and monitoring the growth and development of children under 5 years of age.”
- The construction of a waiting shelter at Unyolo Clinic in Mzimba District through CorpsAfrica volunteer Jackson Mwaini. As the proposal noted: “Statistics have shown that out of 1500 births that happen in the area of T/A Khonsolo and T/A Maulabo per month 7 women and 5 infants die respectively due to poor health service provision. When the waiting shelter is constructed, that means expectant women and their guardians will go to the clinic earlier to wait for their delivery time. This will reduce the cases of emergency deliveries since when their time is due the resident midwife will help them deliver in good time thereby improving maternal and infant health.”
- The installation of tap water in Muchese Village in Chitipa District through CorpsAfrica volunteer Prosperina Mpekansambo. As the final report noted “The community has had no clean and safe water and they travel long distances to access clean and safe water. Waterborne diseases came about because of lack of clean and safe water. We then agreed to install 6 taps in the community that will reach the whole community. In return we managed to reach every cluster in the village by installing 8 taps whereby everyone is able to access clean and safe water in a short distance.”
- The construction of the Mwangidzi Bridge in Neno District through CorpsAfrica volunteer Sheira Kasinja. As the proposal noted: “The construction of Timber deck bridge will improve the community members’ lives by giving them a safe passage to access important services, for instance, schools and hospitals, increase productivity for those whose farmland is on the other side of the river and economic growth for business people.”
- The construction of Nanjili Bridge in Zomba District through CorpsAfrica volunteer Wisdom Mhango. As the proposal noted: “The community noted that constructing a bridge would mitigate most of the challenges they face when accessing essential services from institutions like schools, hospitals and markets. They noted how children in the communities have this problem every year, how patients, especially pregnant women have to use a longer route, problems during funerals, difficulties for people living with disabilities to cross the river and accidents that occur during rainy seasons as some of the major issues. Hence the community decided to construct a bridge at Nanjili River.”
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lso continued to work with Mudzi Connect – which has been a partner in recent years under the broader umbrella of World Connect (which has long partnered with Peace Corps volunteers and local community leaders). This year Friends of Malawi was able to fund the completion of a library at the Karonga School for the Deaf. As the proposal explained, “In 2022, the Karonga Scouts started to construct a library and literacy hub at Karonga School for the Deaf to enhance literacy skills and improve educational resources among deaf students. The library and literacy hub are designed to host reading sessions, creative writing workshops, and story writing competitions, all aimed at fostering a reading and writing culture among students with disabilities. Since it started, the project has made significant progress, with the structure’s foundation, flooring, windows, and roofing fully completed.The School for the Deaf has requested [funds] to enable it finish outside work, painting both inside and outside and purchase bookshelves and chairs for the students to use.”
Additionally, with the return of Peace Corps Volunteers the Malawi Peace Corps office was able to again start giving small grants from funds donated by Friends of Malawi to support volunteer efforts that needed just a bit of a funding push without a lot of paperwork. This last year they framed these as “100 Dollar Grants” and provided support to a Lilongwe Nature Center ranger workshop series, to library improvements, to a farmers field learning day, to an environmental education camp, and to providing educational materials for form one students. We were excited for Friends of Malawi to again be able to fund small projects directly through Peace Corps volunteers, and look forward to evolving our support along with the ongoing plans of Peace Corps Malawi as they build on their new momentum.
All these projects, and all our Friends of Malawi work, has also benefited from the support of our FOM treasurer Catherine Pargeter (RPCV 2006-2008, Volunteer Leader 2008-2009) and our board secretary Eugene Caruso (RPCV 1990-1992). Eugene has also been our liaison with the Maziko Preschool project, which FOM awarded a small grant to continue its educational programming and build off previous efforts to develop a solid infrastructure for families in the community.
We are only able to provide these small grants due to the generosity of our membership over the years, so if you have the inclination to help we are appreciative of opportunities to pool donations and support good projects. Our new website has a link to donate online, and also has the address for our treasurer if you prefer to send donations by check (Friends of Malawi Treasurer, 1 Washington Square Village, Apt. 13S, New York, NY 10012).
Overall, I look back at Friends of Malawi’s 2024 as a year of filling out our board membership, cultivating our partnerships in Malawi, reorganizing our web presence through the National Peace Corps Association, and starting new relationships with a reinvigorated Peace Corps Malawi. With all that, we plan to start 2025 with some basic strategic planning in hopes that we can hone in on the best ways to fulfill our mission of helping connect our Friends of Malawi community to Malawi itself. We look forward to the possibilities, to sharing updates, and to communication systems that don’t require quite as much patience as they did in Malawi back in 1996!
Zikomo!
Andrew Guest
([email protected]; RPCV 1996-1998)