YWCA MALAWI

Malawi has the 5th highest adolescent fertility rate in Africa at 145 births per 1000 girls aged 15 to 19. Children born to adolescent mothers are particularly at a disadvantage with regard to their health, nutrition, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. The early years, are crucial for lifetime health, learning, and productivity. Our innovation will take a comprehensive; community led holistic approach. The target group will be adolescent mothers. The intervention will provide parents, teachers, and caregivers with the knowledge and skills necessary to provide every child with stimulated interaction and a stable learning environment. Safe baby corners will also be created, where baby stimulation for improved health outcomes will take place. The Safe baby corners will strengthen existing community based child centers. Investing in early childhood helps to reduce inequalities rooted in poverty and social discrimination in society by enabling all children a fair and sound start in life.

Across Sub Saharan Africa, children born of adolescent mothers are at acute risk of poor early childhood development.  Poverty, exclusion, low educational achievement, lack of parenting knowledge and skills and poor mental health limit adolescent mothers’ ability to provide nurturing care to their young children. Adolescents are still growing and maturing physically, cognitively, socially, economically and emotionally.  They are prone to depression. Adolescent mothers often drop out of school and social networks, are rejected by family, religious networks and fathers of their babies, are less informed on nurturing care, and struggle with stigma and exclusion. Early childhood development is increasingly recognized as a priority, the particular needs of adolescent mothers and their young children have been largely overlooked.   

ECD services in Malawi falls short of goals, particularly in rural areas. Few Malawian children get preschool experience, as only 28 percent of children entering primary school have had preschool experience and only 39 percent of children aged 36–59 months were attending childhood education, with large variations by socioeconomic characteristic. There are 11,000 early childhood centers in Malawi that serve 1.4 million children. These are volunteer-run by untrained caregivers. The quality and reliability of services to children vary greatly.

1. The target group will be marginalized married girls, pregnant girls, and adolescent mothers. As an organisation we have experience working with adolescent mothers and there is need to expand to reach more. We start off by finding out there needs though a mini survey, from there we create content relevant to them. Our network of adolescent mothers will serve as role models and support to these adolescent mothers.

2. Care givers - We will work with teachers, and caregivers  in order to provide them with the knowledge and skills necessary to provide every child with stimulated interaction and a stable learning environment. The ministry of gender, children and social welfare is the responsible ministry and will be engaged to partner with in these training

3. Children - We will create safe baby corners for children to be able to access early childhood education. We will also advocate to communities to realize the importance of investing in early childhood education.

1. We will work with national partners, national governments and local authorities, to support adolescent mothers directly to meet in peer support groups to receive psycho social support to build their mental well being and self-esteem. Mentally healthy mother will then be able to provide a nurturing environment for their children. We will also educate and train mothers on how to provide nurturing care for Early Childhood Development.  These groups will engage with local community health centers and other key stakeholders in the community and in the adolescent mothers’ families to encourage dialogue.

2. The program will Strengthen community-based child centers (CBCCs) , to deliver holistic, quality Early childhood care and education services for children in the first 1,000 days of their lives. The Ministry of Gender Development and Social Welfare have established many CBCCs across Malawi. However, the quality of services provided through the CBCCs is generally poor. Most CBCCs suffer from lack of trained caregivers, poor infrastructure, and lack of basic supplies of learning materials. Furthermore, many communities in rural areas do not have access to the CBCCs, as they are mainly concentrated in urban and peri-urban areas. Community members from each CBCC locations will be selected to form a management committee to oversee the functioning of the centers. These male and female community members, comprising of an average of 5 committee members per center, will be trained at project inception in how to manage the CBCCs. In addition, during project inception, parents and guardians will participate and contribute in the formulation of relevant Early Childhood Care and Education materials for infants to be utilized at the centers. This will ensure sustainability of centers following end of project

3. For children centers will provide an infant room to facilitate early learning and basic health and nutrition services. Caregivers of these children, including fathers, will engage in monthly positive and responsive parenting education sessions led by Young Mother Champions. 

This idea is innovative because it takes a holistic approach that includes local communities, the government,  local health services.