For PAMOZA’s community project in Mlowe, Malawi

Hello, I am Annabelle Jaccard, clinical psychologist working in humanitarian organisations. With my husband, Peace Kalua, here in the photo, we have developed a community project with his social enterprise in Malawi PAMODZI.

Peace is a skilled livelihood and life skills trainer who is passionate about improving gender equality, environmental management, climate change adaptation, culture preservation and exchange as well as experienced in developing and implementing such livelihood and life skills training.

Currently we are developing a project in Mlowe, a remote village in northern Malawi with significant poverty, unemployment, gender based violence, environmental degradation, flood risk, and waste management problems. The project has three pillars to address these problems: training and employment, environment, and social well-being.

The training and employment pillar will focus on providing identified vulnerable youth and women with skills for sustainable employment and entrepreneurship in creating art and decorative jewelry using recycled materials and beads, tailoring and design, hair styling and salon management, bamboo growing and furniture construction, soap making, and beekeeping.

The environment pillar will focus on ensuring that all such production is done sustainably and specifically planting bamboo to reduce reliance on wood, reduce soil erosion, sequester carbon to help mitigate climate change, and reduce fuel use for sourcing materials for furniture production.

The social well-being component will focus on providing traditional music and dance classes, festivals, and performances; community gatherings to bring people together to enjoy and share ideas; and mental health psychological counseling and sensibilisation on issues such as stigmatization and gender-based violence.

The traditional authority of the area has contributed a building to be used by Peace as a center for these activities. The community has been actively involved in renovation of the building and is eager for activities to commence. In addition, the government regulatory authority for supporting skills centers in Malawi has agreed in an MoU to provide trainers and some materials. Nevertheless, the project is currently relying on donations from professionals, friends and others who hear about it. As such donations have been insufficient so far, we hope that your donations will help Peace and our team to start this helpful work with the people of Mlowe in early 2024.

We hope our initiative can gather your attention, any donation, even the smallest one can make a big difference.