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Plan joins hands with communities in education
By
Patrick Zgambo - 08-05-2002 |
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There is always a tide in the affairs of men that must be encountered if one has to avoid living in misery for the rest of their lives. Anthropology experts suggest a child sliding from adolescence to adulthood on the African continent is embroiled in one such destiny deciding tide.
Mess around, they argue, the future is bleak but if well handled, prosperity stands in wait. Unfortunately for the African child, it is not as easy as that.
In Edundu and Bwabwa, Mzimba, like most of the surrounding areas, life has not been anywhere near success as the area’s group village headman Robert Ng’oma puts it.
“There were a multitude of problems in our area. We may have an idea as to what solutions to our problems would be but unfortunately we may not have the resources to find our own way out. That is precisely where we needed a partner in development,” he reasons.
Ng’oma says that apart from poor infrastructure that has been one of the major problems in most of the area’s schools, the schools themselves have tended to have very few teachers who lack innovation to boost the spirit of learning.
The result? Poor performance at the end of primary school leaving certificate
examinations and very high drop-out rates. A change of fortunes landed in the area when Plan International, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) working in 45 countries across the globe came with several interventions to their social needs.
The deal was that communities play a part which they would easily do in implementing the interventions. Sourcing locally available materials, mobilising communal labour and running local organisation was thought to be as far as the communities would go. And they did.
Plan International, which works with the sole purpose of assisting children to grow healthy and realise maximum potential, with funds sourced through child sponsorship in developed countries, soon started operating in the area and there has been no turning back.
In the project areas around Edundu, Kafukule and Chimbongondo, Plan identified children from needy families that are the sources of funding from Europe. Funds realised through these children, though, have benefited the community across the board without segregation. The interventions are used in such areas as food security, health, and education among others.
“As parents and leaders, we did have a very bad attitude in the past when we left everything about education to the teachers. But when Plan came, they made us realise that we too have a role to play. After all, it is our children who need the quality education,” he says.
So, Ng’oma says, the communities mobilised themselves and provided locally
available materials and labour in the construction of Plan International, school blocks (each worth K800,000) which have become a common feature in the Mzimba west areas—up to Kafukule and Chimbongondo—in the extreme west of the district.
Ng’oma says being courted by Plan International has made communities, together with school teachers, seek own ways of ensuring quality education and healthy lives of the children in the areas so that the children realise full potential when they grow up.
“It is not a question of money but we are working together now because if we improve our education system, these same children will come back here and develop our area,” he says.
In most cases, schools in the area have lacked adequate numbers of teachers and communities have gone as far as identifying volunteer teachers for the children. In such cases, the volunteers are paid a stipend sourced by the communities in order to motivate them.
Infrastructure development like the one taking place may not be all the area needs to sort out its education mess, says Simba Machingaidze, Plan International’s country director for Malawi. Collective efforts, he suggests, by parents and communities that children be in school is more like it.
“There is a reputation in many places, including in this area, of laxity in monitoring attendance, performance and progression. Our greatest concern is the drop-out rate, particularly among girls. Beginning with parents, we must all share the responsibility of ensuring that access to education is not a monopoly of boys,” he says.
He, however, says that providing a proper environment for learning is a bold step towards achieving good education for children. He stresses, though, that only if the children are on the forefront of beneficiaries, all the efforts will be meaningful.
“The community will only reap fruits if the facility is being utilised by the intended beneficiaries—the children themselves. The community must make sure that the children are in school,” he says.
Wezi Moyo, Plan International’s programme coordinator for the Edundu area says her organisation has also taken the initiative impart on children in life skills to enable them understand changes taking place in their bodies as they grow into adolescence.
For the children in rural areas, they have to compromise cultural values, alarming cases of HIV/Aids, abject poverty and lack of information. For them attaining maturity is more a painful thing than a happy path in life.
“The idea is to prepare children to meet the challenges that come in life as they grow up in schools. In the same programme, we are doing this with emphasis being put on HIV/Aids and how the children can prevent it,” she says.
Moyo says the children are given information on sexuality and also motivated to be assertive, self-confident. Self-acceptance, especially amid natural changes taking place around, is emphasised, says Moyo.
Minister of Gender Youth and Community Services, Mary Kamphweleza Banda
agrees with Moyo that Plan’s life skills is a key method in straightening the future of young people in schools.
“Mainly for the girls, they have to know that the threat is real, both the threat of teenage pregnancy and HIV/Aids. If they get the right information, I believe they will make the right decision to safeguard their future,” she says.
In terms of food security, Plan is making a deliberate effort to make communities diversify in food production. Families who have children under the programme are also given free fertilisers and other farm inputs, to help boost subsistence farming.
Says Moyo; “The areas have been mostly dependent on maize but now the idea
is diversification, where we are not only ensuring food security but also good nutrition for the children and their families”.
From an all time familiar predicament of lacking proper education infrastructure to a very unreliable source of food, Ng’oma says the problems reached a critical point in the last 12 months when the villagers experienced a fatal food shortage.
Agrees group village headman Mkwapasi Mbizi from Bwabwa: “There was widespread hunger in our areas and of course they cannot help everyone but their intervention (with maize rations) was at a time that we were worst hit.
“We hate to be beggars but I wish they could come back next year, because from the look of things, I can tell that it [food shortage] will happen again in the coming few months”.
Machiangaidze on the other hand has rather comforting sentiments for Mbizi. He wraps the words in conditions though. Says he; “If you are serious about the welfare of your children, you can count on Plan as a true friend and partner”. |
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