A Community Collaboration: World Camp's Activism Club at Mchezi

Cyrus meeting with community members at Mchezi

Last Thursday Reinier and Cyrus made the trip back to Mchezi, just 45 minutes outside of Lilongwe, to meet with the brand new World Camp Club as well as with several key stakeholders in the community to discuss how we can continue to work together on educational improvement.

We all agree that activism clubs are very important in continuing the debate among students around HIV/AIDS and the environment as well as in decreasing drop-out rates (students have something on their hands after school instead of engaging in risky behavior). The potential of activism clubs is huge (if you haven’t already done so, watch the video of the HIV/AIDS club at Matapila FPS on our facebook page), not just in engaging its members through educational activities but also by spreading messages about HIV/AIDS, deforestation, gender equality, and nutrition into the community. However, as our field assistant Cyrus Jenda noted, what these students and club mentors (teachers) need is continuous support from World Camp by giving them that little push in the right direction. 

Club Members holding a (semi)secret voting for officers

Three weeks ago we started our first World Camp Club at Mkoma FPS and when we revisited them last week we realized that Cyrus was right: over a hundred kids showed up (proudly waving the World Camp Club flag created by our interns in January) but they did not know what to do next. Cyrus sat down with them and the students elected their president, secretary, vice-secretary, and treasurer. After a long brainstorm session the students decided that this week they will start an outreach project focused on how to care for HIV positive people and they are going to meet with  Mchezi CBO and the group village headman to see how they can all work together to plant more trees. Also, their mentors will continue weekly empowerment writing workshops that we introduced during our 4-day camp and the students brought some of their stories to class for us to read.

Club officers preparing to assume their new duties

The elected students were nervous at first about their responsibilities but their mentors told them that they should not worry as this is a learning process and this will prepare them for dealing with their responsibilities later in life. Cyrus told the club members that just like World Camp they are a group of young minds who think creatively about finding simple solutions to complicated issues and by working hard they too will grow!  

In the meantime Reinier had a meeting with representatives of the CBO, surrounding schools, and the Ministry of Education to discuss how we can increase collaboration between the 11 primary schools in the area as well as have the wider community more involved with educational strengthening. World Camp has been working on narrowing our focus through an innovative and holistic model, and listening to their ideas has convinced us even more that we are going in the right direction! More on that will follow in our next blog post; stay tuned!