DAPP Malawi is in 2021 celebrating 26 years of active involvement in development work with communities through out the country
DAPP is implementing 17 projects within education, health, agriculture and community development in 25 district that span across the country's three regions
I am Nancy Katete, a student teacher at DAPP Amalika Teacher Training College (TTC). I come from Mphate village, Traditional Authority Kuluunda in Salima district. I joined the college in 2016 and this is my second year. At the TTC, we undergo different periods of study such as hitting the hearts, fighting with the poor and charter subject, among others. One of the periods that I have found to be so exciting is the charter subject. The period focuses on subjects like Health Care Expert, Women’s Advocate, Entrepreneur, Community Leader, Food Producer and Media and Information Activism. I am a member of the Women Advocate subject.
Nancy poses for a photograph at Amalika TTC
Student teachers are involved in teaching community members in reading and writing
In Women Advocate, we have been dealing with girl child education, women empowerment and women abuse. As part of the subject, we went out into the communities surrounding the college to investigate issues affecting women. When we analyzed the data from the survey, we found out that most girls dropped out from school due to forced marriages, early marriages and early pregnancies. We also found out that most parents prefer to send boys to school than girls because of the myth that girls’ place is in the kitchen. Furthermore, we found out that 70% of the women in those communities dropped out of school at primary level. It was also noted that 49% of the women were unable to read and write. We later on hosted an open day in those communities to provide feedback on what we had found out. We then encouraged the communities’ members to actively participate in the community lessons provided by student teachers of Amalika including myself. We have about 40 women and 18 men participating in the lessons in which we teach the community members how to read and write. In addition, we have helped the members establish Village Savings and Loan groups. We have also been teaching and encouraging them to adopt sustainable agricultural practices. I know for sure that the skills that I impart to the community members around Amalika TTC during my time at the college will have a positive impact in their lives.
Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Malawi through its 400 Primary Schools project, provides the opportunity for teachers graduated from DAPP Teacher Training Colleges who are working in government primary schools to voluntarily stick together to share ideas, skills and experiences on how to improve the environments around their schools. The project started in 2012 with 18 teachers. The number of teachers has continued to grow over the years and now the project works with 87 teachers from 56 primary schools across Malawi. One of the teachers Ester Sanganizani working at Mbwetu primary school in Chimutu zone, in Lilongwe district organized an open day with an aim of showcasing how learners at the school are performing. The activity which took place on the 8th of June 2018 was attended by parents, guardians, the zone’s Primary Education Advisor (PEA) as well as learners from the school.
A learner performing during an open day
Teachers and parents attending the open day
Among other activities, the learners had a reading fair to showcase their reading skills to parents and guardians. The PEA Elube Swetala who was the event’s guest of honour, urged the parents and guardians to play a role in their children’s education by encouraging them to read after school. “To help your children succeed in school, you should do your part to ensure that they have a strong foundation in language and literacy-related skills and a desire to learn to read. Reading will give your children the opportunity to practice this skill in meaningful ways,” said Swetala. Sanganizani joined the project in 2013. She meets with her fellow teachers participating in the program after every school term to evaluate their work and develop work plans. The teachers also produce extracurricular learning materials called spines which are adapted from the government of Malawi’s education curriculum which they use on top of what is already provided by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
Carolyn Kafodya Linje, a standard 1 and 2 teacher at Mzumazi Primary School in Lilongwe has been teaching for 19 years now. Like many other primary school teachers, her daily teaching routine had been reading in front of the pupils and writing on the board and nothing more. “Every day I made sure that I delivered my lesson plan and then knock-off,” says Linje. Throughout the years, it was not a problem at all for Linje as a teacher seeing a pupil packing up before the class was over. She could not even bother to follow up on learners who absconded classes or dropped out of school. ‘I believed it was the responsibility of the learners’ parents to ensure their children attended school,” she explains.
One of the classrooms with prints on walls
Charts made for teaching and learning for lower class learners
In 2016, Linje attended two trainings during school holidays on In Service Training Programme through the Let Children Stay in School (LCSS) project being implemented by Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Malawi at Mzumazi Primary School where she is teaching today. Through the trainings, she acquired skills of keeping learners at schools by creating conducive learning environment for them. In addition, she was taught to ensure a good relationship exists between the learners and her by among others, following up on them when they abscond classes. Using local resources, she fully decorated the inside walls of her class with child friendly paintings of diagrams, numbers and words. Some colourful words inscribed on cards hang up under the roof of the class in rows. She also made a beautiful seamless watch which hangs in front of the class. “The learners find the watch more interesting because most of them have never seen a wall clock at their home,” Linje says. Since then, her teaching methods have changed for the better. She says her relationship with the learners has also improved. “Pupils in my class are enjoying lessons” says Linje. Am teaching using a simplified method called Teaching and Learning Using Locally Available Resources. The method is helping them find every lesson interesting and simple because they are able to visualize everything that I am teaching them.” “I use these resources to teach them in relation to the topic that I am delivering that day.” Explains Linje adding, “learners are now able to read the painted words. My class is more interactive and pupils easily understand every lesson very fast unlike in the past when it used to take much time for a pupil to read text.”
The LCSS project phased out in May 2018 after three years of implementation with funding from the Rodger Federer Foundation. It aimed to reduce the dropout rate for children in lower grades of standard 1 and 2 in 114 primary schools in six districts of Chitipa, Rumphi, Ntchisi, Lilongwe, Machinga and Nsanje. Some of its activities include training teachers in handling special needs children through in-service training at DAPP Teacher Training Colleges; establishing and promoting school gardens and feeding programs; establishing hand washing facilities; rehabilitating classrooms and constructing playgrounds for the children.
Rosalia Grevazio Kapala is a 42-year-old mother of five children. She comes from Lilambwe village in Senior Group Village Headman Lilambwe, Traditional Authority Msakambewa in Dowa district. A wife to a local leader, she is one of the active members in the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) that works hand in hand with the DAPP Dowa Teachers Training College (TTC) from the surrounding primary schools and pre-schools.
As a PTA member, she has been working with the TTC since 2010. She said the college sends the student teachers to primary schools that are around the college for teaching practices and this is one of the ways through which PTA members are involved. She spoke warmly of teachers that are trained at DAPP as being exemplary and hard working. In addition, she said through working with the school, as parents, they have managed to establish Community Based Care Centres (CBCCs) where children go to learn, play and receive meals before transitioning into primary schools. She said one of the things they keep learning from the TTC, especially students are to mainstream gender at household level as well as in schools. She said through their regular interactions, they learn that girls can do chores which are considered to be masculine and vice versa. As one of the caregivers at Mtendere CBCC in Lilambwe village, she is involved in gender promotion. She said both the preschools boys and girls are taught to clean their plates after eating their porridge, a role that is considered to be feminine.
DAPP graduated tailoring student explains the skills she uses to make a variety of products
Minister of gender and UN cordinator center attended the celebrations
“As a parent and care giver I support that both boys and girls should be given equal opportunities. This helps girls to not shun away in social activities. For example, there were instances when girls used to drop out of school and enter into early marriages. But since 2016, there has been a skills training program that was introduced to empower girls with tailoring skills in order to establish small scale businesses. And I can proudly say today that 35 of the girls that have undergone the training in three of the teams were in marriages and we worked hard to bring them back to school,” she said. DAPP TTC works hand in hand with the communities around the colleges, student teachers offer free lessons to community members in sanitation and hygiene, handicrafts, climate change and sustainable agriculture practices. The students also carry out surveys in the surrounding communities when they learn how families live, raise children, work and problems they face in their day to day activities. This enhances the relationship between the colleges and the community at the same time allows the student teachers to learn about life in rural areas as they are expected to work in rural primary schools upon completion of their studies. Mrs Kapala said as a community member she is proud to be working with DAPP TTC in Dowa and for the strides made in their area, she looks forward to betterment through continued cooperation and the working relationship that is there between the community and DAPP.
Established in 2010, DAPP Dowa Teachers’ Training College (TTC) trains young men and women to become primary school teachers in rural Malawi areas. Since its establishment, the school has graduated 556 with 223 males and 333 females. The school trains teachers who become skilled and productive members of society through spearheading community building efforts. Blessings Kambewa is the Principal at DAPP Dowa TTC who has headed the institution since its establishment. He explains that the idea behind the DAPP TTCs is to train the young men and women who become “Another Kind of Teachers”. “In DAPP TTCs we use a DNS (from the Danish name Det Nodvendige Seminarium meaning the Necessary Teacher Training College) training model that is designed to create a new generation of teachers who will bring modern and inclusive quality education into poor communities thereby contributing rural development,” he explains. DAPP Malawi has four TTCs namely Dowa in Dowa district, Mzimba in Mzimba, Amalika in Thyolo and Chilangoma in Blantyre district. The training approaches are such that encourage students to take lead in the operations of the colleges. Regardless of gender or family backgrounds, the student teachers in DAPP TTCs are introduced to a world of equal opportunities upon enrolment into the colleges. They are divided in groups that comprises both genders and allocated tasks to carry out regardless of gender. Some of the tasks they carry out include cleaning around the college campus, preparing their meals during weekends and establishing vegetable gardens. DAPP TTCs train teachers who are expected to live in rural areas. The Principal for Dowa TTC stressed that gender balance for rural primary school teachers becomes a problem where student teachers are not motivated to live in rural areas. He said, often times, female teachers prefer to work in school that are in urban areas. However, this is different with DAPP graduated teachers, pointing out that the TTCs are located in rural areas which provides opportunities for interactions and adaptation of life in rural areas at an early stage. “The TTCs are in rural Malawi areas, the students carry out their teaching practices in rural primary schools, and the college ensures that there are regular interactions with the community members in the course of training,” said Kambewa.
Blessings in his office
Blessings points at one of the teachers slogans
The DAPP student teachers provide free lessons to community members at the college in areas of; sanitation and hygiene, conservation agriculture, knitting, sowing as well as climate change through tree planting exercises and use of firewood saving stoves. Community interactions are said to have improved the number of female teachers in rural primary schools. When the teachers are posted by the Malawi government to work in the rural areas they play a role of spearheading community building efforts and being change agents in their schools. One of the brainchild of Dowa TTC was the establishment of Girls Clubs which target learners and youth from schools around the college. The Girls Clubs are made up of both boys and girls with an aim of promoting girl child education. Female teachers become role model to girls in primary schools hence the learners are able to open up to their teachers on issues that affect them thereby encouraging them to remain in school.
