PRIORITY AREAS
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We understand that different communities, families, individuals experience different challenges to education. Due to such differences, we use evidence-based interventions. We love to put communities at the center of our programs so that the solution comes from them.
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We work with communities stricken by and individuals from extreme poverty. We identify community schools and individuals in desperate need of assistance and in partnership with our stakeholders (Donors, Partners, etc.) bring the needed interventions. At the heart of our education interventions are 1. youth and 2. Children.
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Our interventions have taken the shape of 1. donations of teaching and learning materials to identified schools, 2. full tuition coverage for secondary school beneficiaries which has also included 3. schools uniforms and school necessities and 4. donation of school uniforms to primary school beneficiaries. We hope to execute more projects in the lines of infrastructure. We also work with special needs children to help them have a better education experience. We currently work with a school for the visually impaired in Ekwendeni.
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Other than these interventions, we also use advocacy to ensure that young people are in school. In this, we have trained individuals in the education system such as teachers, parent-teachers associations, and social welfare committees on the education rights of the child. For instance, in 2014, our first project in education took an advocacy approach to readmit more than two hundred street connected youth and children into schools.
God Cares believes in the power of education. We view education as a ladder out of poverty and we continuously work to provide for the educational needs of vulnerable youth and children. Education is a fundamental human right and ours is to ensure that every child, every young person despite their background has access to quality education. One thing we are greatly passionate about is to ensure that children are in school instead of the streets.
Education
Health
Health is key to development. Without good health, our efforts in promoting children, youth and women would be in vain. Our goal is to achieve health equity by addressing health disparities that come due to poverty.
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We focus on three main areas; the HIV/AIDS pandemic, maternal health and children's nutrition. Most street-connected children are victims of HIV with most of them being orphaned as a result of the virus. We address such challenges by working with partners to provide free HIV/AIDS testing and counselling to our beneficiaries and for those found positive assist with Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART). In our current and previous projects, we have partnerd with Mzuzu Central Hospital for such services. We raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and civic educate communities on prevention.
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In terms of maternal health, our focus so far has been to visit new mothers and their babies in hospitals and make provisions of clothes, and sanitary products including soap for both mother and child. However, since our focus for many of our projects has been individuals from extreme poverty, our current goal is to start advocating for and training women in our beneficiary communities about safe motherhood. We are also focusing on bringing to attention and calling for action for the building of health centers where pregnant women can have easy access to health care. This comes after our recent focus on research where we discovered that most of the rural communities in which we operate in lack health centers causing major health disparities. We believe that this approach will also assist with our other two health focus areas: HIV/AIDS and Nutrition because the health centers will offer services in line with these two as well.
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In terms of nutrition, we run a feeding Programme at our safety home in Mzuzu, where once every week we provide a balanced meal for children identified to come from extreme poverty where their families cannot afford to provide for their nutritional needs. To learn more about our safety home and how you can support us, click here:
Gender
Based Violence
In Malawi, Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a common trend. The most common form of violence in Malawi is Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). This has affected and continues to affect many women and girls in Malawian communities even leading to the loss of life. There are so many causes of GBV in Malawi including poverty and knowledge gaps about GBV. We believe that when GBV is eliminated, many families can easily come out of poverty.
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What we do at God Cares is build the capacity of women and girls concerning GBV while working closely with local leaders to ensure that women and girls are in environments free of abuse and in which they can thrive.
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Our approach also involves raising awareness about GBV among men and train them to be champions of GBV elimination. We believe that a complete involvement of all genders in issues of violence is key to ensure positive change within the communities. For instance, we are currently running a gender sensitive solutions in security and humanitarian response project in which our focus is to empower women with knowledge about women’s rights and how they can stand for their rights. What this project seeks to address is social-cultural constructions and norms that promote gender violence. Our approach for this project is inclusive of both men and women. Read more about this project.
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We also work to bring to justice perpetrators of GBV by working with law enforcement authorities as we receive several cases of violence through our safety home especially involving young girls. For instance, we have had cases of defilement where teenage girls have been defiled by their guardians especially step-parents. In such, we give the girls a “safety home” while we work on their cases with social welfare authorities and law enforcement. We also provide the girls counselling and medical check-ups to ensure that they are mentally and physically healthy. Learn more about our safety home and how you can support us
Economic
Empowerment
Poverty is one of the critical social issues in Malawi with more than 60% of the population living under a dollar a day. As GCRF, we work to eliminate economic disparities by ensuring that youth and women are economically empowered.
We hold the belief that when we invest in women, they are highly likely to invest back in their households and communities. When it comes to youth, the percentage of the youth population in Malawi is above 50% and investing in them means investing in the future. Of these young people, most of them especially those in rural communities drop out of school due to economic challenges and end up doing nothing. We therefore work with street-connected youth and those from poor homes who dropped out of school.
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Skills training and development. We train young people and women in skills such as plumbing, carpentry and electrical installation. On average, an employed carpenter earns about K50, 000 monthly. Some of our trainees have gone on to start their own businesses while others find work. We are currently expanding our approach to include training on agribusiness and financial management. We wish to integrate a small course training on agribusiness and financial management together with the above vocational skills. Our vision for this is to ensure that the youth and women understand how they can manage their finances and invest in businesses which can grow their financial capacity. This is to ensure that they do not have only one source of income and hopefully increase their chances of becoming finically independent.
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Agribusiness support. We provide resources that are needed to start an agriculture based business to our beneficiaries. We offer several training sessions about entrepreneurship and managing businesses. Trainings are facilitated by individuals well-versed in different agribusiness. Our goal for this particular approach is to help families, especially women-headed families create a stable source of income to support their children and homes. We enrich those that are already Agripreneurs through training and those new to the business with starter resources. For example, we have in the past provided piglets and vegetable seeds to women-headed families to start pig and vegetable farming.