Joyce Banda Foundation

The Foundation and the Founder

The Joyce Banda Foundation was founded by Honourable Joyce Banda. Honourable Joyce Banda, who has come all the way from the civil society world is a Member of Parliament for Zomba Malosa constituency and she is currently Malawi’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

She founded the Joyce Banda Foundation in 1997 using the prize money from the Africa Award for Leadership for the Sustainable end of Hunger which she jointly won with former President of the Republic of Mozambique, Mr. Joacquim Chissano.

The Foundation which initially started as an academic centre based in Malawi’s commercial city of Blantyre has however over the years evolved into a fully fledged multi-faceted institution with a social welfare and community development wing called the Joyce Banda Foundation Integrated Rural Development Programme (JBFIRDP). This was Hon. Joyce Banda’s response to the sad and unfortunate situation that many people in Malosa area face.

Orphan Situation in Zomba Malosa Area

Zomba Malosa is one of the areas in the country that has the highest numbers of orphans and other vulnerable children. According to official statistics, it is estimated that there are 10,000 orphans in Zomba Malosa constituency. This constitutes about 10% of the entire area population. It should be pointed out here that the number of orphans is increasing at a very alarming rate due to high death rate in the area.

15% of the orphans are in child and elderly headed households. Due to resource constraints, the Joyce Banda Foundation is only helping 1500 orphans out of the 10000. This is a great concern to the Foundation considering the fact that the future of the remaining orphans remains jeopardized and offers little if any hope for a better future.

Joyce Banda Rural Integrated Programme

As already alluded to, the Joyce Banda Foundation is also running an Integrated Rural Development Programme under which the Nsigalira Secondary School falls. This is an effort by the Founder of the Foundation, Honourable Joyce Banda to help the Malosa Community in the area of socio-economic development among other areas.

Under this programme, the Foundation is implementing a number of initiatives in the areas of Education; Health; Agriculture and Food security; Water and Sanitation; Natural resources and Environmental Management and economic empowerment.

Education

The Foundation has two academic centres namely the Joyce Banda Foundation urban academic centre and Nsigalira Secondary school and nursery schools.

1. Joyce Banda Foundation Urban Centre: Founded in 1997, the centre provides both primary and secondary education. These are pay up schools. Proceeds from the Blantyre schools among other things are used to run Nsigalira Secondary school and the six orphan care centres. The schools have the following enrolments.
   1. Primary school: 350 children
   2. Secondary school, which runs up to form five, has 300 students
2. Nsigalira Secondary School

   Touched by the plight of orphans and other vulnerable children (see section on orphan situation in Zomba Malosa presented below) Honourable Joyce Banda took it upon herself to help improve the plight of the orphans through education among other areas under her Integrated Rural Development Programme. This, she has done by among other things establishing a free secondary school for orphans, the first of its kind in the country.

   The introduction of free primary school by the Government of Malawi has chanced orphans particularly those from child and elderly headed households to go to school. However, when such orphans are selected to go to secondary school most of them fail because of lack of school fees among other requirements.

   This is a very sad situation because such disadvantaged children are denied an opportunity for better future. It is against this background that Honourable Joyce Banda thought of doing something for such disadvantaged members of the society. The secondary school has a total of 200 students who, as already alluded to, are orphans.

3. Orphan Care Centre

   In addition to free secondary school, the Joyce Banda Foundation also established 6 orphan care centres in the area. The centres have 600 children. Among other programmes the Foundation provides free nursery school education to orphans at the centres. The Foundation aims at preparing the children for primary education, an opportunity which they would not have in their lives due to their unfortunate circumstances.

School Support Programmes

The Foundation fully realizes and appreciates that keeping a child/ students at school is a function of a number of functions. In view of this, the Foundation is among other programmes implementing some school support programmes. These include the following:

School Uniform Programme

In addition to providing free education, the Foundation also introduced a School Uniform Programme. Under this programmes, the Foundation provides free uniforms to students at the secondary school and the less privileged children going to government as well as mission schools. The programme has so far benefited1000 students and pupils.

On average, a school uniform costs about $20. As elucidated in the future plans, the foundation intends to send 5000 more children to school with all basic requirements. As the situation is in other areas, many underprivileged children in the area drop out of school due to among other reasons lack of school uniform. A lot is hidden in a school uniform as it covers the difference among children in terms socio-economic status.

School Feeding Programme

The Joyce Banda Foundation introduced a school Feeding Programme to help improve the nutritional status of children and help to keep the children in school. Hunger is one of the factors that greatly contribute to school drop out among orphans particularly those from child and elderly headed families.

Under this programme, Students at the secondary school and children in nursery schools are provided with one meal a day. As indicated in the budget it takes $ 300 and $100 per month to provide one day meal at secondary and nursery schools respectively.

Blankets Programmes

Due to the high levels of poverty among orphan guardian households particularly child and elderly headed orphans lack blankets that would help to protect them from adverse weather conditions. The Foundation is running a programme under which the guardian families are given blankets. As outlined in the achievement section of this paper so far the Foundation has donated over 5000 blankets to guardian families at a coat of $ 20 per blanket.

Other Programmes Being Implemented Under the Joyce Banda Integrated Rural Programme

As already alluded to, the Joyce Banda Foundation is also running an Integrated Rural Development Programme under which the Nsigalira Secondary School and the 6 orphan care centres fall. This is an effort by the Founder of the Foundation, Honourable Joyce Banda, to help the Malosa Community in the area of socio-economic development among other areas.

Under this programme, the Foundation is implementing a number of initiatives in the areas of education; Health; Agriculture and Food security; Water and Sanitation; Natural resource and Environmental Management and economic empowerment.

Achievements of the Foundation

Despite limited resources the Foundation has made some substantial achievements essentially in all its areas of focus:

1. Establishment of Nsigalira Secondary School. This is a Secondary school, the first of its kind in the country, which provides free secondary education to 200 orphans in Zomba Malosa Constituency. The foundation also provides free education to 50 underprivileged students at its Blantyre campus.
2. Establishment of 6 orphan care centres with 600 children.
3. Introduction of School Feeding Programme under which children in both Secondary and nursery schools are provided with one meal a day.
4. Introduction of School Uniform Programme under which students at the Secondary School and those going to government and mission schools are provided with free school uniforms.
5. The school support programmes have seen substantial reduction in school drop out rate and many who dropped out have gone back to school.
6. Distributed over 5000 blankets to children, the elderly and the disabled among others.
7. Donated goats to 10 villages with each village receiving 10 goats. Milk from these goats help HIV/ AIDS positive mothers, who are discouraged from breastfeeding their children as a way of preventing mother to child transmission to feed their children.
8. With the help of partner organizations and other well wishers, has provided clean water to 20 out of the 200 villages in the area.
9. Provided micro-credit to 40 women and 50 youth groups.
10. Provided economic empowerment skills training to 10 groups in such areas as baking and soap making.
11. Distributed 400 treadle pumps and 1 diesel engine to the community for irrigation farming.
12. Provided farm inputs to 1000 families for the past 2 seasons.
13. Provided cassava cuttings (seed) to over 10000 cassava growers in the area.
14. With the help of partner organizations, constructed 4 clinics in 4 of the 200 villages.

Organizational Structure

The strength of the Joyce Banda Foundation Rural Development Programme primarily emanates from its organizational structure which is community – based. It has a very strong bottom-up structure with the following bodies:

• An advisory body made up of local chiefs, female community leaders and the founder herself.
• Village committee. The committee is headed by a Mrs. E Wasili and women constitute about 70% of its membership.
• 5 paid up staff

Challenges

Despite these achievements, the Joyce Banda Foundation faces a number of challenges. These include the following:

1. 180 villages go without clean water. The challenge is so serious such that Villages along the Domasi River use water from the river (Domasi) which is highly contaminated by refuse from the Molasa Hospital. There is an urgent need to provide these villages with clean water.
2. In the area of health: the area has a population of over 100,000 people with only 1 (one) Rural Healthy Centre constructed 60 years ago and the 4 clinics constructed by the Foundation. Pregnant women among such service users, have to walk over 15 km to get to the health centre which also happens to be a paying one. Due to the vastness of the area, low income levels among the community and communication problems, health services remain less accessible to the majority of the community.
3. Even though the Joyce Banda Foundation has constructed 4 clinics, it has no access to drugs.
4. Payment of teachers’ salaries. As it has been pointed out, the Nsigalira Secondary School is free. The responsibility of paying salaries to teachers and those helping in the Orphan Care Centres rests squarely on the Founder herself. It costs the Founder about $1000 per month pay salaries for teachers and those helping in nursery schools.
5. In the area of Education: As already alluded to, the Joyce Banda Foundation has constructed a Secondary School that is ill-equipped: operating with very limited resources i.e. no library, laboratory and hotels.

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