Small Business Training

Development vs Relief. One of the age old challenges of development organizations is helping communities understand the difference between Relief and Development. In July, we had the opportunity to teach a group of community and church leaders on this topic.

We did a drama to help our leaders understand the difference. A man is trying to cross a river but he doesn’t know how to get across. He begs someone to help him and the person lifts him up on his back and begins to carry him across the river. But soon the person grows tired because the burden of carrying his friend is just too much, so he drops him in the middle of the river. Now the man is in serious trouble, not only does he not know how to cross the river, he’s stuck in the middle of the river. Finally someone comes along and offers to help. The man tries to climb on the person back, but the person refuses. “No,” he says, “If I carry you, I might grow tired and drop you, let me teach you how to cross the river.”

Pastor Ngwangwa plays the part of the man stuck in the river, his cries for help were admirable! Pastor Jemiton comes by the teach him how to cross the river.

Poverty often causes people to cry out for relief. The situation is so desperate that it seems that without relief they cannot survive. However, relief is very difficult to maintain and not a healthy way to survive. Relief in the moment is important. There is a fire and a person’s home, including clothing and all belongings are destroyed. Immediate relief is needed. The person needs food, clothing and a new place to sleep. However, we must move away from relief as quickly as possible to begin developing ways for the family to live without relief — relocation, a new job, or training that will allow them to purchase their own food and clothing, to pay their rent or build a new home.

The parents of this vulnerable family are both blind. In order to assist this family, we’ve hired the father as a chaplain at the Grace Center, he reads from his braille bible and shares the gospel message with everyone who comes by. His wife recently participated in our Small Business Training program and is eager to begin her small business soon.

In Malawi, the crisis of poverty is severe. Most of the families living in the community where we are working live on subsistence farming meaning they grow enough food to feed their family. Some families do not even manage to do that. Farming without expensive fertilizer inputs or sustainable farming methods makes it impossible to grow enough food for a family of 4 or 5 much less 9 or 10 people. When a crisis hits one of these families, it makes it extremely difficult to manage, for example when a brother or sister dies leaving behind one or two children, or when a daughter abandons her children in your care leaving you with 4 more mouths to feed.

Mrs. Sambani is pictured her with one of our social workers, Mr. Kondwani, and her daughter Madalitso, one of our scholarship students. Her husband became quite ill a few years ago and his health is deteriorating. Mrs. Sambani is one of the students in our most recent Small Business Training class and will begin her small business soon. Through our school we are able to locate extremely vulnerable families and identify ways to assist before an “orphan” situation arises.

These families will often come to our center and ask us to take these children into our orphanage. We have found over the past few years as our children are aging out of the orphanage that raising children in an institutions does them NO favors. In fact, it causes them great harm. Children raised in an institution have not family or friend network to uphold them when a crisis hits.

In order to mitigate this problem, we’ve established our Orphan Prevention Program. This program helps children remain with their relatives at home, while providing opportunities to the family for small business training.

Mr. Mavuto completed his small business training in February 2021. He set up his small business barber shop using the loan we provided. From the skills he learned in his small business class, he took some of his crops and sold them and started a small grocery store next to his barber shop. His life is slowly changing!

Our first round of Small Business Loans are being repaid now. The second round of 10 students are working on completing their training by putting together their budgets for their business. It is amazing to see the ideas people come up with for their businesses — in this round of loans we have everything from donut and tea shops to butcher shops, small groceries and fish markets. It will be so fun to see how these small businesses thrive.