A Pen for Social and Economic Impact

                 In most of the communities where I have worked, the importance of educating a girl child  is undermined.    I remember visiting one school in one of the rural communities in Neno district where standard 8 class had 1 girl against 30 boys in the same class. Records showed that the number of girls was high from junior primary and it kept on dropping as the classes went up.   In such communities, it is a huge challenge to help girls to stay in school because the norm is when the girls reach puberty, the goal is to get married. For this one girl, it was only a matter of time before she dropped out as well, because being the only girl in class for her has to take a whole lot of courage. We had checked with the headmaster of the school to tell us the major causes of the dropouts. He confirmed that the girls end up getting married. He further said most of them look at their married friends and believe that they...

  Intergenerational Poverty in Malawi We can argue that, quite a number of today’s poor children will become tomorrow’s poor adults. Why? Inheritance is of the most common means by which physical property is transferred from one generation to another in Malawi. However, the design of living for poor Malawians is not necessarily passed on from one generation to the next. Poverty is often associated in people’s minds with misery, but for us who are familiar with rural Malawi will understand that poor families accept their slice of poverty with courage and cheer just like in most developing countries.  In Malawi, there are families, who are rich today, and yet they come from poor backgrounds. This upward movement, therefore, indicates that the poor in Malawi are capable of taking full advantage of changing circumstances and greater opportunity. It is important for us to understand that poverty hits children the hardest and threatens their most basic rights to survival, health...