Parents Committee Grant Winners
Name: Julie Gladnick
School: A&S
Major: Middle Eastern Studies and Media Studies
Graduation Year: 2011
Julie is interning this summer with Beyond Good Intentions in Malawi.
Mwasewela bwanji and greetings from Malawi! I am here on a research fellowship with Beyond Good Intentions, a U.S. organization that uses film, educational programming, and field-based research to explore the most effective and innovative approaches to international aid. My duties in Malawi include conducting field-based research of aid organizations and documenting their work through film and photography.
Check out my blog!
Notes on the first week
I arrived in Lilongwe, the capital city, a little over a week ago. It is beautiful and sunny, and the city has more dirt roads and trees than Washington D.C. has cement. My first week was spent making contacts in the City Centre with the major aid organizations in Malawi to investigate their work and arrange future days for filming and visiting the individual projects. The first day I met with Zilani Khonje from ActionAid and also found information about the World Food Programme in Malawi . Over the week I visited the United Nations Development Programme and interviewed an official from UNICEF.
Generally an issue with the larger aid organizations in many developing countries is accountability. Also, while many aid organizations such as UNICEF and WFP provide short-term relief in the form of food and nutrition and medical aid, there are not usually many strategies for long-term development. BGI is interested in the (mainly) smaller organizations that have creative approaches to aid in fostering long-term development, such as those who support small businesses, practice microlending, and those who work with the local people in training and enabling them to provide for themselves with dignity. Projects that receive the most input from local people in terms of identifying the problem, making a solution, and implementing their projects are also important. Over the next ten weeks I will travel to Mzuzu, Blantyre , and back to Lilongwe to explore these various organizations.
Midway
In the past seven weeks I have traveled to areas in northern and central Malawi to visit international aid organizations. While in Mzuzu I met with the director of the MicroLoan Foundation, a UK-based organization giving loans to women groups in the rural areas of Malawi ; their unofficial motto in terms of giving aid is “A hand up, not a hand-out”. Microlending is a fairly recent practice in Malawi and is spreading as outside aid organizations are considering microloans as an alternative to direct cash. I attended meetings between a few women groups receiving the loans as they discussed their businesses and savings.
Perhaps the organization I have found most fascinating so far is SolarAid. Based in the UK, the organization’s mission is to enable impoverished sub-Saharan Africans to have access to electricity. In Malawi, SolarAid operates in the northern areas and is run almost entirely by Malawians. SolarAid trains HIV-affected persons and widows whose husbands died of HIV to assemble the solar panels, which are then sold cheaply to the local people. One solar panel (four volts) can power radios and charge cellphones, and because the panels are locally produced they are sold at an affordable price and can be repaired—and of course it provides employment for marginalized groups and generates flow in the local economy! The customers are no longer dependent upon kerosene, which is harmful to the environment and individual health. SolarAid appears to have a creative solution to alleviating poverty.
In addition I have met with farmer’s cooperatives, including the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union, and I have visited a school. My most recent visits have been to a Swedish and Norwegian-funded set of projects based around the lakeshores of Malawi and in Salima. The Malawi Lake Basin Programme is truly operated by Malawians, who team up with farmer’s organizations such as FUM (Farmers Union of Malawi) and NASFAM (National Association of Smallholder Farmers in Malawi ) in gaining rights for smallholder farmers around the lake districts, which contain 80% of the country’s extreme poverty. The Programme also funds such income-generating activities as livestock production, group savings and lending, and trains local people in better technology related to composting and solar drying of vegetables. The organization promotes crop diversification to limit dependence upon maize and to promote food security in addition to practicing intercropping to reduce soil infertility. The projects benefit poor farmers of the lakeshore areas, especially women (who constitute 70% of the farmers in the program and hold 75% of its leadership positions). The income generated is used by the people to meet some needs such as funding community-based centers for orphans, gardens to support the elderly and widows, and a learning center. The Programme also has implemented Study Circles among its members, who meet to identify problems facing their community and work to find solutions with the resources they have.
Progress is definite although slow, but I believe it is ultimately sustainable, not least because the Swedish Cooperative Union (one of the funding organizations) requires each project to have a business plan, and waits for the people to make the initiative in planning and starting the projects before being assisted. Perhaps the new trend in international aid will be to fund and connect projects that are operated by local people, in conjunction with existing local organizations, rather than creating a new international organization to work in a specific country. It is a concept I have heard one program director term the “Volcano effect”—building from the ground up, as a grassroots approach, utilizing and mobilizing local people and organizations, as opposed to the “Bomb approach”: dropping an outside project on the people as a top-down strategy. In addition, I believe organizations that attack the roots causes of poverty in Malawi —food insecurity, over-dependence on maize, gender inequality, HIV/AIDS and health, education—will ultimately find more success because they promote long-term solutions.
I can say with certainty that this internship has surpassed my expectations. I love the field-based research visiting the organizations and photographing or filming them. Because my program has so much flexibility, I have been able to travel off the proverbial beaten path in new directions to meet people from other organizations I only discovered after arriving in Malawi. In terms of public service as related to international aid and giving to others abroad, I have learned a great deal about some effective approaches. Many people have a burning desire to help their fellow mankind in other countries. However, nothing is as simple as giving money or resources; there are a host of other factors that those in a position of power or responsibility to take action must take into consideration in order to create sustainable change and valuable service.
In my remaining weeks I am traveling to the southern parts of Malawi to visit more organizations and to complete my research.
Final Reflections
Malawi has been a lot of firsts for me—my first time setting foot in Africa, my first time traveling alone, conducting long-term field-based research, riding a motorcycle, being mugged and subsequently going to court, and my first time living with and communicating with people in languages I knew little or nothing of; and I loved every minute of it.
Through this fellowship my eyes have been opened wider to the challenges facing an impoverished developing nation and its people, and what others around the world are doing in an effort to promote positive, sustainable change (as well as those whose good intentions have not been as successful, or in fact the opposite).
Personally and professionally, the journey has shaped my future plans. One turning point came when I visited StoryWorkshop, an organization that harnesses the power of the media to affect change creatively—working to fight against gender-based violence and child labor and exploitation, education and awareness of HIV, and promoting food security and good farming practices. I will someday use what media skills I have for social change or to aid international causes against hunger, gender-based violence, and to promote human rights. I believe everyone has a story to tell, and that it is only through hearing others’ stories that we as human beings learn to empathize with one another and work for change. The power of listening, recording, and documenting the work of others is important, because only through hearing a child speak of his forced labor on a tea plantation or witnessing a bruised wife after a beating or a starving grandfather can one be moved by emotion and reason to take action.
I would also like to serve others through facilitating the discovery of innovative solutions to current issues and aiding people in acquiring the means to implement sustainable solutions and futures. In addition, I would encourage others who wish to help to pour their energies into the roots of a problem and to plan creatively and wisely, working in conjunction with the people being served.
One recurring theme throughout my research has been the philosophy of helping others to help themselves—a belief employed by mirofinance institutions as well as projects and groups spearheaded by local people though funded by outside donors.
An ancient Chinese adage advises one to give a man a fishing pole and to teach him how to fish rather than to simply give him fish; then he can make a living for himself. There is simple wisdom in this story, and moreover, there is dignity.
Malawi is a country struggling amidst extreme poverty, dependent upon donors, plagued by corruption and diseases, and has one of the highest maternity death rates; and yet it is a peaceful country—the disenfranchised and poor unemployed youth somehow seem to resist violence as a solution—with incredibly warm and friendly people, with neighbors who consistently take in their friends’ children to feed them if their parents are unable despite having almost just as little. It is a country of spirit and hope.
I am fortunate to have met people from all walks of life—people on gap years, hospital volunteers, seasoned travelers, fellow Wahoos, young and old people starting their own aid organizations, barmen who build orphanages in their spare time, local vegetable sellers, others strolling along the same roads as I. They have shared a variety of perspectives from a host of backgrounds which, at the end of the day, matter less than anything else. People are people are people, and if you have similar hopes and dreams as I do, then we can be friends.
I would like to end with a quotation that struck me along the way this summer: "I have seen, tasted and touched many places. This has made me realize how small, how connected, how wonderful the earth is."
Zikomo.
