|
Since its inception in 2002, Malawi Tomorrow has completed
several small infrastructure projects, including the
repair of bridges and wells in Mulanje District and
collaborated with the Malawi Millennium Project in rehabilitating
the water-powered Mlowe maize mill. Ongoing activities
include support to the Mchinji orphanage, the funding
of anti-retroviral drugs for a group of HIVAIDS sufferers
and the provision of scholarships for children attending
primary and secondary schools.
The major current projects and initiatives are:
SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS
It is the policy of Malawi Tomorrow to concentrate
its scholarship programme on the provision of basic
primary and secondary education within Malawi, targeted
principally on orphans and other highly vulnerable children.
So far, there have been only four awards for tertiary
education and all of these have been in respect of undergraduate
courses at Glasgow Caledonian University, in the priority
sectors of Nursing and Tourism/Hospitality Management.
PERKINS BRAILLERS REHABILITATION PROJECT
The education system in Malawi, though conceptually
sound, is chronically under-resourced. Blind and visually
impaired (BVI) students are doubly disadvantaged because
of their disability and the lack of funds to import
the relatively expensive equipment needed for them to
acquire and maintain braille literacy.
In recent years, arrangements for ensuring that BVI
students and their teachers have ready access to working
braillers have become progressively unreliable. Years
of pressure on running cost budgets have had a particularly
adverse impact on the availability of tools, essential
spare parts and replacement machines, which are made
by Perkins in the United States. As a result, the structure
set up several years ago for managing the stock of braillers
has all but collapsed. Only through cannibalisation
of broken machines, allied to the imagination and skills
of two specialist mechanics at Montfort College, near
Blantyre in the Southern Region, has it proved possible
to keep the system working at all, albeit at a gradually
declining level of effectiveness.
 The project Malawi Tomorrow has been implementing since
early 2006 is essentially one of logistics management.
At its core is the need to set in place a reliable system
for procuring, maintaining, repairing and distributing
braillers. The first phase required the importation
of a significant quantity of parts, tool kits, manuals
and training materials. Phase two involved the collection
of about 250 broken machines from throughout the country
and their delivery to the workshop at Montfort College.
The third phase, now in progress, entails the redistribution
of repaired braillers to the schools and colleges they
came from. Thereafter, arrangements will be made to
conduct courses in each of the three regions to train
teachers how to maintain braillers on a day to day basis
and to carry out simple repairs on the spot. In due
course, a quantity of new, replacement braillers and
a generous working stock of spare parts will be imported,
sufficient to restore the national stock to a healthy
level and to provide a strategic reserve.
The project is expected to be completed by early 2008,
although it might take somewhat longer before full financial
and management responsibility can be transferred to
the Ministry of Education.
The Scottish Executive is providing the bulk of the
funding from its International Development Fund. The
balance is being donated by Malawi Tomorrow’s
traditional supporters, including the Allied Irish Bank
and Scottish Courage Brewers.
Click here to read extracts from Malawi Tomorrow's annual report on the project’s
first year.
PARADISO HOUSE
The main purpose of the project is to sensitise the
community in one of the most deprived areas of Malawi’s
capital city to undergo voluntary counseling and testing
for HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. A related aim is to meet
the basic needs of the area’s elderly and orphans,
many of whom are already known to have HIV/AIDS.
At present, Paradiso House is a modest brick building
located in a shanty town suburb of Lilongwe. It is the
antithesis of the ‘showcase’ aid projects
that most foreign visitors tend to see. It illustrates
what a few dedicated Malawians can do to help themselves
and their community, in appalling conditions and with
minimum external and no domestic financial backing.
The Director, Mara Kumbweza Banda, is an able, highly
articulate and well-motivated individual, who has satisfied
Malawi Tomorrow that she has the potential to make a
difference. Like most of her volunteer workers, she
herself is a PLWA (person living with AIDS).
Since the expiry of start-up support from the Malawi
Social Action Fund (MASAF), Paradiso House has had no
regular core-funding. It survives mainly on occasional
donations and monthly subventions from Malawi Tomorrow,
which is in the process of setting up a funding mechanism
that will rehabilitate the project and expand its capacity.
A top priority is to re-house the project and provide
a community centre in a modest brick building on a plot
of land bought by Malawi Tomorrow. The foundation stone
was laid by the Scottish parliamentarians Karen Gillon MSP and Sylvia Jackson MSP
when they visited Malawi in February 2006 as members
of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation.
SCOTLAND MALAWI BUSINESS GROUP (SMBG)
The SMBG was launched by the First Minister and the
Malawian Foreign Minister in Edinburgh on 6 November
2006 and is in the process of being registered as a
Scottish charity. The Group’s goal is to stimulate
enterprise in Malawi and to help develop sustainable
businesses, primarily by fostering links between the
Scottish and Malawian business communities. Its first
initiative will be to roll-out a microfinance project
in the Southern Region of Malawi .
The SMBG Board is expected to comprise three or four
prominent Scottish entrepreneurs and senior representatives
of CBI Scotland, the Scottish Council for Development
and Industry (SCDI) and Scottish Business in the Community.
Day to day management will be exercised by a small Management
Committee, the initial members of which will be Bill
Hughes, former Chair of The Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust and CBI Scotland, and Billy McAneney and
George Finlayson from Malawi Tomorrow.
MICROLOAN FOUNDATION (SCOTLAND)
Malawi Tomorrow is one of the moving forces behind
the microfinance project initiated by the Scotland Malawi
Business Group to help groups of highly vulnerable women
in the densely populated south of Malawi to raise themselves
and their families out of poverty through investment
in small enterprises.
Microfinance has already changed attitudes towards
helping the poor in Asia and Latin America and is increasingly
making a positive impact in Africa. It has created a
banking system based, not on collateral, but on mutual
trust, accountability, participation and creativity.
It has proved highly effective in promoting income generation
and employment growth. Successful projects transform
rural communities, delivering tangible social benefits
in terms of nutrition, literacy, birth rate, HIV/AIDS
awareness, reduced dependency and enhancing the status
of women.
A primary aim of the Malawi project is to maximise
the prospects of success and minimise overhead and management
input in Scotland by collaborating with an existing
local microfinance provider with a track record of success.
Accordingly, we have selected the two independent wings
of Microloan Foundation (MLF), in London and Malawi,
as our partners and joint managing agents, mainly because
of their policy of concentrating on those most in need,
focus on training and business development and efficient
use of capital. Their ‘not for profit –
not for loss’ model , which ensures long term
sustainability through a revolving fund, reflects the
combination of developmental nous and commercial discipline
that Malawi Tomorrow and the SMBG strongly favour. Their
innovative Microventures initiative, which provides
clients with the skills and other support necessary
to build higher margin and more resilient businesses,
is another strength.
Funds generated in Scotland will be disbursed through
MLF (Malawi), which was founded as an independent organisation
in 2002. Since then it has opened six offices, recruited
31 staff, provided more than 10,000 loans to over 200
women’s groups and achieved an average repayment
rate of 96%. At present, it operates only in Northern
and Central Malawi and has agreed to cede development
of the Southern Region to MLF (Scotland).
A detailed business plan is already in place. It provides
for the establishment of five branch offices over three
years and focuses on working with the poorest rural
and illiterate clients not served by other microfinance providers.
A phased approach to implementation will be adopted.
The first phase, lasting three months, will be one of
‘due diligence’, during which key staff
are recruited and trained and feasibility studies carried
out on potential branch locations. During the second
phase, the first branch will be opened as a ‘proof
of concept’. Initial operations will be on a small
scale to allow time for testing controls and ensuring
that sound quality reporting procedures are in place.
Phase three will entail the full roll-out of the other
four branches. The total investment required over three
years is about £400,000.
Home About
UsProjectsNewsContact
UsDonate
|
