Youth Uplifted Through Vocational Skills
Fransisco Vitsitsi, Executive Director for Community Hope Initiative Malawi, says the organisation has managed to train over 1000 women, surpassing their target.
LILONGWE & MZIMBA, Malawi - Two Dutch organisations, working through a Malawian organisation, Community Hope Initiative, are working in two of the country’s districts to uplift the lives of the youth by providing vocational skills so that the youth become self-sustaining, writes Moses Thole.
Stitching Afrika Zwolle 2007 and Wild Ganzen from the Netherlands are providing resources to Community Hope to implement skills development programmes targeting the youth in Lilongwe and Mzimba.
Since 2020, Community Hope Initiative has realised the large number of unemployed young people who have not been able to sustain themselves economically and decided to start training them with hands-on skills such as tailoring, bricklaying, carpentry and business management.
It also established self-help groups for women, in which they give each other soft loans for small-scale businesses, thereby boosting their lives.
Mable Lungu, a member of the self-help group Twivilane Club in Mzimba district described the project as beneficial for empowering women economically.
Lungu, who has two children, narrated what she has achieved since she joined the group.
"I have bought pigs, which I am raising now and through selling piglets, I can pay school fees for my children. Previously, it was hard for us young men and women to find some economic activity to sustain our lives, but our stories have changed now,” beamed Lungu in an interview with this publication.
Fransisco Vitsitsi, Executive Director for Community Hope Initiative Malawi, says the organisation has managed to train over 1000 women, surpassing their target.
"Skills create jobs and incomes," said Vitsitsi.