What’s New with Dinnar and Wanyala Village
As a village team member of Wanyala village, we invite you to check back often to follow the successes and challenges of Dinnar and other members of the Wanyala village as they begin to work with CARE through the Join My Village program. Here’s what’s happening now:
April/May, 2010
April and May have brought many reasons for celebration for the Join My Village communities in Kasungu. The tobacco and maize harvests have been good, there is once again enough food for everyone and the local markets are bustling with new business. Similar to the crops that were planted many months ago and have finally yielded valuable results, the seeds of change planted by the Join My Village program are also starting to bear fruit in a multitude of ways.
With the distribution of 160 girls’ secondary school scholarships, children are studying harder in anticipation of securing their own scholarship in the future. According to Lufina James, member of one of the Village Savings & Loan Association (VSLA) groups in Nguluwe, “Students are more eager to go to class. Parents who were not that keen on school are now keen.” All of this excitement is only heightened by the new construction of teachers’ houses across several of the villages. Communities know that a new teacher’s house guarantees at least one new instructor for their local school – a much needed resource when some teachers are currently instructing over one hundred children per class.
People are finally seeing the results of their committed saving through the VSLA groups and new businesses are popping up across the villages. Katrina Mwale, mzati in Tembwe village, said that evidence of the diligence of VSLA groups who stuck out the lean months is everywhere. “There are so many businesses – samosas (fried pastries filled with meat or vegetables), beer, doughnuts, sugar cane and others too. It's because of Join My Village.”
To celebrate the amazing changes taking place in the Join My Village communities, we brought all ten mzatis together in Kasungu to share their stories of challenge and success, learn from each other and celebrate all they have worked so hard to accomplish this first year of the program. Margret Banda, 8th grader and mzati of Katukula village, probably put it best when she commented on her first trip to Kasungu, “If I have been to Kasungu, I know I can do anything.”
Through this first year of Join My Village, we have indeed seen that anything and everything is possible – and we have only just begun.
Updates from Wanyala Village
- After mourning the loss of her husband in March, Dinnar Phiri is looking toward the future. She keeps her spirits up by training new VSLA groups in Wanyala. “Right now I am putting the past behind me. I have established four new groups. I am so proud.”
- She doesn't have much trouble convincing new people to start groups. “At first maybe they used to think these things Join My Village was telling us were not real. I think the loan facility is what has encouraged people the most. Now they are admiring the small businesses that people from the old groups are starting.”
- As the harvest came in, the small businesses started by the members of Dinnar's Mphawisatopa (Chichewa for “the poor never get tired”) group have ratcheted savings up to 70,000 Kwacha ($467.00). “This is a time where people have money. We are selling cloth, ground nuts, sweet potatoes, banana cakes and donuts.”
February/March, 2010
Villages in Kasungu are feeding their guests again. In Malawi, if a village can feed visitors, it does. So, when the plates of nsima and greens with beans and drumsticks stopped this December, we knew it was likely people in the villages were not eating themselves. But, on visits in February and March, villages were once again welcoming guests with local treats. The signs that things are getting better are everywhere. Riverbeds that were dry have filled to bursting. The maize is ripe in the fields. Nutritious pumpkins and squash crowd at the stalks of the tobacco plants. Tobacco hangs to dry in every available shelter: from the ceilings of clinics, classrooms and is strung from the thatch of bedrooms. Though tobacco auctions haven't opened, it can be sold locally to buy small necessities like salt, soap and beans, and there is paying work to be found picking and stitching and drying the leaves. As the cash begins to flow, the small businesses set up by VSLA members are prospering. The members themselves are investing more.
Across Kasungu, communities continue to increase their trust in the Join My Village team. One reason is that the VSLA groups are starting to see results – their savings have grown and their businesses are bringing in new money. Another is that over 110 girls' high school scholarships were distributed in January and February.
The scholarships had a far greater impact than anyone at Join My Village had anticipated. Primary schools saw scores of girls returning to class. Many had not seen the point of finishing primary school, which is free in Malawi, when they knew that their families could not pay for high school.
Hope has indeed returned to the Join My Village communities, and the seeds of change that have been planted over the past nine months are growing strong roots for a promising future.
- Girls Education
- 113 secondary school scholarships distributed to girls across all of the villages (8 of the girls are from Wanyala village)
- 15 group village schools have received new reference materials, including English Dictionaries, English Grammar books, World Maps and Blackboard Rulers
- 8 new female teachers’ houses have been planned and materials secured, with a planned completion of June
- Village Savings and Loan Association Groups
- 55 Village Savings & Loans Association Groups have saved a total of $4,707 (over 700,000 Kwacha)!
- This averages out to $6 per person, which is nearly 5% of the average Malawian’s annual income of $160
- In Wanyala, there are three groups with a total of 30 members and savings to date of $218
Updates from Wanyala Village
- On January 31st Dinnar's husband died, two weeks after testing positive for HIV. Their marriage was not always easy, but in recent years, their love had grown very strong. “We must have been the closest couple in Wanyala,” she says. “When he got sick, I brought him to church and we became church-going people.”
- Dinnar continues to attend her VSLA group meetings. The VSLA group allocated their extra savings to pay for her husband's shroud, and gave her money to help pay for the funeral.
- Despite this sadness, there is one good thing that has happened in Dinnar’s family. Her daughter, Liviness, was chosen for a Join My Village scholarship in December. “Obviously, she wouldn’t have gone to high school after her father’s death,” Dinnar says. “The way it is I am very happy.”
- We caught up with Liviness on the beautiful campus of the Santhe Secondary School, where she is a boarding student. Proudly, she took us on a tour of her new school, pointing out her homeroom, the science and computer labs, her dormitory, and a basketball court. Her skin glowed and her eyes shone. She was worlds away from the girl we saw in December, sitting on a stump in her mother’s yard with her brother on her knee, waiting anxiously for her father to find school fees. “I love school and I know that it is my future,” she says.
- As Join My Village field officer, Tufwe Mwafulirwa, made her rounds in Wanyala one afternoon in March, she got a sense for just how profoundly the scholarships had affected people in the village. “The women told me the story of a third grade girl who was informing her parents, 'You should not give me too much housework because I want to concentrate on my education so that I can win a scholarship.'”
January, 2010
- Mphawisatopa (Chichewa for “the poor never get tired”) VSLA group started saving in early November, after CARE's field team finished their first stage of training. So far, the group has saved 7,000 Kwacha ($48.61).
- During Mphawisatopa's elections, village mzati Dinnar Phiri was chosen as a money counter. The money counter tallies the shares invested each week and tells the record keeper (secretary) how much each member has saved for the record keeper to record the transaction in the pass books.
- Over the past month, Dinnar has saved 1,200 Kwacha ($8.33). In spite of tough times, she's managed to buy as many as five 50 Kwacha ($0.35) shares at weekly meetings. Like most Mphawisatopa members, Dinnar does casual labor, called ganyu in Malawi, to earn the money she invests in the group.
- Mphawisatopa's members haven't started borrowing yet. They are waiting for Tufwe Mwafulirwa, CARE field officer, to finish training them on how to structure their loans and pay them back. Dinnar has had a little bit more time to think about her longer term business goals, and perhaps noticing the fastidiously clean but ragged scraps of clothing on her neighbors' kids, she's decided that the clothing business has a future in Wanyala. “I'm thinking about second hand clothes,” she says. “I have never done it but I think it is hot right now.”
- Dinnar had no special plans for Christmas this year. All of the family's chickens had died of Newcastle disease, a highly contagious and deadly virus that affects poultry. “We can't plan for Christmas when the children are failing to go to school,” she says.
December, 2009
The hungry season, which lasts from December until February or March, is a precarious time for people in Kasungu's villages. In years like this one, when the last harvest was scant, grain stores are exhausted by December and new crops will not be ready until March, or sometimes later. All too often, simply focusing on survival trumps plans for the future. Because so many people rely solely upon agriculture, crucial things like education, a roof to keep the rain out and good health – a mother's best intentions – are subject to the whimsy of annual weather systems.
This is exactly the vicious cycle that Join My Village was designed to help break. By introducing the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model, villagers (in particular women) have a new opportunity to diversify their incomes by learning how to save their money, earn interest, borrow from their groups and start new businesses that do not rely solely on farming. By enabling women to earn an income for their families, and have a new-found voice in the household’s financial decisions, history has shown that more children, especially girls, have the opportunity to complete their primary educations and often continue onto secondary school. Coupled with the secondary school scholarships to be funded through Join My Village, the program provides a powerful one-two punch to loosen the grip that the “hungry season” has traditionally had on these villages.
Tufwe Mwafulirwa, a veteran VSLA trainer with CARE, has seen groups in rural Malawi grow their savings from nothing to as much as 600,000 Kwacha ($4,166.67) as women establish durable businesses. “This is the peak period in Malawi when money is in the field,” Tufwe says. “But it will pick up (referring to VSLA activities). By May you will really start to see a result.”
November, 2009
- Dinnar helped to start the Mphawisatopa village savings and loan group. In Chichewa, Mphawisatopa means “the poor never get tired.” The group is planning elections for a chairperson, treasurer and secretary.
- The women of Mphawisatopa haven't started saving yet, but Dinnar already has a plan for how she will find the money to buy her first shares. Dinnar keeps a garden where she is able to grow pumpkin leaves and turnips. With the money she earns from selling produce from her garden, she will begin to save with the village savings and loan group.
- Dinnar still plans to use a loan from the group to make and sell batches of banana fritters. Women who come to her house to buy cooking oil are asking for juice, so she plans to stock that as well. If those businesses go well, Dinnar hopes she won't have to spend so much time working in her neighbors’ fields to support her daughters in high school.
- Since CARE came in August the town built a new school block (classroom), dug seven pit latrines for students and started a tree nursery for a grove of fruit trees at the school. “We want to make the forest at the school so there will be fresh air and a good environment for the school,” said village headman Lingison Nkhoma.
- Village headman, Lingison Nkhoma, was relieved when CARE returned after the delay caused by a lack of transportation. Even with hunger he believes the people of the village will be able to save and that the businesses they start may be one of Wanyala's best hopes. “I am so eager to work with you,” he says.
October, 2009
- Dinnar is treasurer of the School Management Committee, which on its own undertook construction of seven toilets for the school.
- “We’re very interested in our school, and want to go further with education. We can produce bricks, but we can’t produce cement or iron sheets. We need some organization to provide some assistance. The SMC is very eager to participate in any development activity.”
- “I am interested in checking how the children are participating at school. I also monitor the relationships between teachers and children. This is my motivation. I watch out for violence against children, and check for participation in the classroom. If children are participating, you can conclude that the teacher is a good performer.”
- It's only recently that parents in Wanyala have come to appreciate the benefits of sending their kids to school. In all Wanyala there are just ten students who have graduated from secondary school, according to Lingison Nkhoma, the senior group village headman.
- There are just three teachers for the 360 students in Wanyala's primary school. To cover first through fifth grades, the teachers rotate from classroom to classroom (and tree to tree to teach the grades that don't yet have a classroom). Students who get past the fifth grade must walk to another primary school more than seven miles from Wanyala's center.
September, 2009
- CARE introduced the village savings & loan association (VSLA) program to the members of Wanyala village in late July. Dinnar is ready to contribute savings to the VSLA so she can get a loan and start a banana fritter business. Her primary goal is to keep her children in school.
- The elders of Wanyala village are dreaming big as well. They want the village members to participate in CARE’s work so the children of the village can grow up to realize their futures – to be teachers, clerks and doctors.
