NEWS (Nov 2006)
Editorial, LUCAN NEWSLETTER, Dublin, Ireland
Nov 26, 2006
A Hand up, not a Handout for Malawi
We adopted Malawi after a visit there at Easter 2005 and now we are just back from our fifth trip. Mary is involved with two projects in the St John of God centre in Mzuzu, while I focus on water projects as Wells for Zoe (www.wellsforzoe.org) in four, remote areas, where St John of God have outreach clinics.
We have funded the projects ourselves so far and now that we have a structure in place we feel that an extra bit of funding would drive the process more quickly. We will continue to pay for ALL the expenses ourselves. This means that should you choose to help, ALL your donation goes where you decide.
Mary is working on two projects, one with the school for intellectually and physically challenged children, and the other is an after school project for street children. She is also funding fees for secondary schooling. She finds herself helping amazing mothers or older siblings who perform miracles daily. Imagine what it is like to have a disability in one of the poorest countries in the world!
My goal should be less complicated, just to provide clean drinking water to poor remote villages where women and girls locate, and carry home, a most awful cocktail, loosely called water.
Having sourced a magically simple and sustainable water pump, I felt the rest would be easy. The community would dig and build the well, and take ownership of the pump by making a substantial contribution to the cost. A Hand Up rather than a Handout! Then I discovered that poor in Malawi means having nothing at all. I had to find a new way.
When we agree to help a village now, the village chief has to donate a piece of land on which we pay the villagers to begin commercial, market driven organic farming. In return we supply the seed, tools, training and encouragement and start a programme of pumps, wells, irrigation and farming. Awaiting our first of three crops for 2007, in February next, we expect to have a village fund, after expenses, to begin a micro credit scheme, giving no interest loans to the participants.
This scheme operates only if women have an equal share in everything and in fact women are getting most of the wages and will benefit most from the credit scheme.
This is happening in areas where their first wages, from Wells for Zoe, is the first time most have handled their own money. The scheme will also help relatives to care for large numbers of orphans by providing food from the “village garden”
We have found that the smallest contribution makes a big difference to the people we work with
John Coyne
Oct/Nov 2006: Dam Building in Mzgora, Northern Malawi
(movie 26.4 MB)
Built by the amazing efforts of the small Zambia village community, 30 miles north of Mzuzu in Northern Malawi, it epitomizes the resilience of the human spirit and their faith in a mad Irishman who told them a year earlier that it wasn’t economically viable to use a 12HP diesel water pump for irrigating maize.
The completed dam shown at the end of the movie after many more days of work will provide dry season, irrigation water - through about 1.5 km of channels - to their village garden and about 25 family plots.
Profits from the village garden will pay back for this dam next year.
Plans are afoot for replication of this dam type, as well as experimentation with other types, and fish farming in this and adjoining villages
A Meitheal in Mzgora -The Movie
Oct/Nov 2006: Village farming (movie 28.0 MB)
The cultivation of the first “Village Garden” began in Zamba village on Nov 10, 2006. We had invited 10 workers to come with their hoes at 9am but due to transport problems we didn’t arrive until 10.30, to find work hadn’t even begun, some people had come and gone and a few remained not sure what to do.
A few “wobblies” later, the word went out that anyone who came would get 200 Kw (about €1.08) for their time instead of the agreed 170Kw per day. Finally we got a Meitheal of 22, 16 of whom were women, who were by far the best workers.
For those of you who are not of an Irish farming background, a Meitheal is a group of farmers who club together to do a specific task, which in my young days were cutting the turf and threshing at harvest time
As the movie shows, The first 'village garden' in Zambia, Mzgora they came, they worked, they sweated and cultivated about half of the 1.25 acre plot. This was an amazing feat in lands which were overgrown with nasties that had me running for the sticking plaster.
(John, your hands are too soft, was the comment with laughter!)
Not to mention the temperature, which reached 38.
When pay time came I found that most of the women had never handled money before. When I outlined the no interest credit scheme which will develop from their labour, the shouts and cheers must have reverberated all the way to Lucan.
One more Meitheal finished cultivation the next day and our 6 permanent employees have done all the planting. They decided to use a treadle pump to irrigate for 3 weeks until the rains came, in order to be ready for the market early.
Now I’m told that the maize is shooting up and will be ready to market by the end of February, the weeds are trying to do likewise but without success, garlic is keeping the ants away, road works are in hand and everyone is happy.
