Planting Seeds and Seed Planting

The Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education (CYECE) is a charity organisation established in 1997. Its aim is to address socio-economic development issues affecting children and young people in Malawi. CYECE, in collaboration with the International Service, is implementing a project called ‘Promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights and education for girls’ in Dedza, Salima and Mangochi.

The CYECE Office in Dedza, previously a Red Cross building and Church

Along with our CYECE Community Facilitator, Max, we have conducted activities in various schools on cross cutting issues such as Sexual, Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) (e.g. teenage pregnancy), Nutrition, HIV/AIDS and early marriages. Our target groups are girls and young women and before activities began we conducted baseline surveys with schools and community groups to identify issues that affect them the most. We could also identify their existing knowledge and experiences. We conducted ‘pre-testing’ before interviewing hundreds of people and this gave us the opportunity to test the questionnaire, evaluate the questions and re-design them. After some training and pre-testing, we were ready to go to the field to meet communities and really start to understand their lives, the challenges they face and identify what role we could play. We were given tasks from our Team Leaders, for example to research things or identify opportunities. 

Chrispin delivering a SRHR session to girls and young women in Bembeke

As part of the ‘Active Citizenship’ concept, Gus contacted the Forestry Commission and organised for us to get involved in a tree planting project in Kasumbu organised by the German Development Corporation. The community take ownership of the project and have a target of preparing 100,000 seeds (80% will survive and grow). They are given the tubes, seeds and training. The focus of the project is land resource conservation and is based on successful models which have taken place in Ethiopia. We were able to help with filling tubes as well as entertaining the children with games, singing and dancing! We can work further with the same organisation to deliver family planning sessions in the coming months as the increasing population demands more from land resources.

Chrispin and Pelani preparing tubes before trees are planted in the rainy season

Group synergy has been really good because we have been able to plan and conduct activities as a team, sharing roles according to each other’s skills and interests. However, it was more of a challenge for the UK Volunteers to fully participate on all the activities because it was done in local language, called ‘Chichewa’. Luckily enough, the in-country volunteers were on hand to translate discussions which then allowed all volunteers to actively participate, ask questions and give feedback. The UK volunteers also spent time keeping crowds of children entertained with games, singing, drawing and dancing!

The team!

We quickly identified that young people are generally shy in responding to questions on SRHR and it was frequently suggested that there is a lack of confidence in general amongst girls. This came across more especially in interviews, particularly if the interviewer was the opposite sex. Once we realised this was the case we could re-organise the interviews so respondents were more comfortable with the environment. It also encouraged us to consider interventions that could help girls to increase their confidence.

On our most recent trip, we carried out activities in the Mtakataka school zones. As a team, we often arrived late, however this is very common here and referred to as ‘Malawian time’. If you organise to meet someone at 8.30am, be prepared to wait until around 9.30am at least! It also takes at least an hour for food to be prepared in restaurants in Dedza. They don’t typically have lots of customers so food is prepared from scratch and nothing is ‘pre-cooked’. A local restaurant regularly frequented by volunteers is called ‘Winners’; from the outside it doesn’t look very appealing! However for K1000 (around £1) the team have chicken or beef, chips, rice and salad. The locals see their food much quicker, although they tend to have Nsmia with vegetables.  

Local restaurant, 'Winners' where chicken is cooked on the barbeque (braai) outside

The most popular dish for some volunteers - chicken, rice, chips and salad, costs K1000 (£1.08).

The ICS programme is non-skills based which means that volunteers are recruited based on their attitude and personality. Having said that, we have all been able to share our ideas so that processes, activities and the general working environment can be improved. We get together as a team and share our thoughts after each activity and in our Monday morning meetings. When this happens, it really feels like we are making a difference and we know that the experience will be better for our friends that will join Ernest and Jason in October!

Written by Chrispin Solola, Team Dusty Dedza