Development

Help that matters

Help that matters
Help that matters

A recent study by Afrobarometer said it all about Sub-Saharan’s deepening poverty. Despite rapid economic growth, revealed the study, poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is refusing to recede. In fact, the story of Kingsley and Janet Januale from Chabulika village, T/A Lundu, Chikhwawa bears testimony. Married with two children, the two, for years, have been living on the margins of survival. Uneducated and without any vocational skill and capital to start a business, the Januales were born blind. “We have to be guided everywhere. We can’t do anything on our own. As a result, we survive on lams. Without the pity of others, we are nothing,” says Kingsley, the husband.

Janet’s concern, however, her two children. “We cannot participate in income generating activities such as the one where people renovate roads and bridges [Public Works Programme] because we are blind. As a result, we fail to raise money to buy our two children their school needs for school. They do not have good clothing, shoes,” she says. Equally troubling is the house which they live in. It is a windowless, one-room shack built of mud, grass-thatched and during rainy season, says Janet, the hell of leaking is deep and unbearable. “Sometimes the maize flour we have for food gets soaked leaving us without food,” she says, adding that: “Whenever our children get soaked, they do not go to school. I hate rainy seasons”.

The Januales represent a classic case of what happens when poverty conspires with disability to inflict desperation and destitution on humanity. And it is not just the Januales who embody this story. This is a story of a number of Malawians across the country. In an attempt to lessen the plight of such people, over the years, especially since the return of democracy in 1994, there have been a number of poverty reduction strategies developed and implemented mostly by government. However, the story of families like that of Januale is a potent symbol that earlier strategies have not achieved the intended. Some economic experts have long argued that most of the poverty reduction strategies have failed because they are developed by technocrats in air-conditioned boardrooms without a clear understanding of the problem they seek to address. This is why some non-governmental organisations, moved with a cause to lift the poorest from the dungeons of desperation, have teamed up, going the rural to understand the challenge people face and find ways of reducing poverty.

One such non-governmental organisation is the Blantyre Synod Church and Society Programme (CS&P). With technical assistance from Dan Church Aid and funded by Tilitonse Fund, the CS&P is implementing an Economic Empowerment of Women (EEW) programme in Neno and Chikhwawa aimed at providing opportunities to the poorest of the poor, especially women. According to Cydric Damala, CS&P programme officer, the objective of the project is to empower women economically. “We believe that women are the nucleus of every society. Their well-being translates to the entire family. A family is poor when a woman is not active. So we are targeting women because they are the centre of the family politics,” he says. The Januales were one of the couples that got captured by this project. In January this year, the couple joined Tiyesenawo Village Savings Loan (VSL) group. “We were, in the first place, trained on what we would be capable of doing as business. My husband is cobbler and I joined the VSL group. I was given start-up capital to participate in the group. The entire group was also trained and advised to practice inclusion,” says Janet Januale. Their lives, today, have not dramatically changed. But, according to Januale, is not as miserable as it used to be before. “With the money my wife borrows from the group, I am now able to buy enough raw materials for my business,” he says. Not only that.

The VSL initiative also taught them to diversify their business by drilling a well which also gives them income from the sale of water at K25 per bucket. “We can now pay the loans and the surplus used for buying the basics such as food, detergents, fending for our school going children and buying raw materials for shoe repairs,” says Janet. But Janet happiest moment will be the last day of this year. Her VSL group will be sharing the money they have been crediting and debiting to the bank on 31 December. “We plan to buy a bicycle and build a better house,” she says joyously. The project, according to Damala, will phase out in 2015. Currently, almost 300 households are being targeted in these two districts. Damala believes that by the time the project will phase out, lives of a number of its beneficiaries will change for the better.

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