Un/Making CSC
Malawi

Malawi

Two Malawian NGOs collaborated in this research, Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO) and Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (CRECCOM) (see Partners). Both organisations were founded over 20 years ago by local leaders. They both have a youth and gender focus, and although neither identify themselves as a ‘communication NGO’, they both have deep roots in practices of dialogical communication, including theatre, radio, digital technology, and more.  

After the first round of workshops, practitioners at one of the NGOs suggested a second round of workshops engaging some of the communities they have been working with over the years. This process was led by Lemani Makina, alongside another Malawian practitioner and emerging researcher, Jessie Akambadi who also facilitated a workshop with youth.       

The picture emerging from research in Malawi offers an insight into the damaging effects of power imbalances and funding scarcity and volatility, mirroring the situation for many NGOs in Malawi and beyond that have been primarily reliant on funds part of international development cooperation. Both the NGOs in Malawi are looking to social enterprise as a response to the conditions they find themselves in. The shift to social enterprise has hallmarks of activism, hope, protest, resistance and resourcefulness.  

Gallery

This is a house that covers the whole of Malawi. Inside this house there are so many tools that are to be used for the betterment of youth, women and children of Malawi. For example, there is a loudspeaker to amplify their voices – like social media; we also have an umbrella in case of a storm, and you can come to YONECO to get an umbrella when you need it. It also has a very big eye: whoever is messing around with children is being seen, whoever is corrupt, whoever is stagnating youth development will be seen.
Our social enterprise is like a child or a little boy. Our social enterprise still depends on the (NGO) organisation. The social enterprise is not yet independent, so it's like a child such that if there is a need we ask a staff member from the (NGO) organisation to help us. The organisation may say ah the social enterprise should do this for us. This child is creative and has a lot of potential.
Donors are like seasons. This object is more or less like a globe where you a have map of the world, that’s why it is round. I don’t know if the curriculum has changed, but in my time we had winter, spring, summer and autumn. So the green part is the spring, this is where you have funding, you have rainfall. And rainfall is associated with crops, it is very beautiful and you see it is always green. It means everything is ok. I wanted the red for this part: summer is when it is dry, where you have no funding, or when the funding comes to end, and they say ‘oh we have changed our forecast, we are doing advocacy, there is no funding'. They give a lot of reasons. Bascially no rainfall, no funding, dry. This one is autumn, where immediately after the funding, after the growing season, you harvest. There is a time when you have done well in a project, and there is no funding left, but they use you a lot. They say 'oh can you send us this thing, we are attending an international conference and we want to feature the work of that particular project'. So the communication is there, you keep on providing information and success stories, but you have no funding from them. Usually at this time they check on sustainability to see if the communities are still doing the work, so you are still keeping in touch even though they are not funding you. You have to be really good so that they publicse you, so that when others see it they come to you. So it is a season on its own. So winter – the cold season – this is the time when nothing new is coming. You know that there are donors there, but they are just quiet, they are more less like providing funding but necessarily engaging with you. So this is when you know that one foundation has funded one other institution, but you are not necessarily benefitting. This is where they are saying, 'ah no, we know you can do this but currently we are funding another organisation within the same country'. You know they are providing resources but they are not coming to you. So donors are like seasons, they will never fund you throughout, they will change depending on emerging issues. We have to know the seasons of the donors, so we know that sometimes we may not have funding, at other times we do. Our social enterprise relates to the seasons too. It is like ‘make hay when the sun shines’ – so when the funding is there we need to maximise. Because it can also go through the same seasons. But if the social enterprise had done good work when the funding was there to sustain the operations, it can help us to prepare for different seasons. The seasons, the dry spells can be caused by a number of factors. For example, the COVID brought everything to a standstill, there was nothing that our social enterprise could do because it was a global issue, people stopped travelling. But if we do well when business it there, when it is a dry spell then we will still have resources. I think we used to have few projects which were funded. At that time we had no idea that there would be a dryspell. Now when we look back and say at that time when there were lots of projects if we had this idea then it would have been good. I’m not sure if the planning is there for the seasons. For example in April to May we should expect a lot of business, initiation ceremonies, weddings, celebrations. Towards December up to April everyone is focuses on the field, on the crops – you need to buy fertizler, you need to make sure people are doing the work. That’s the time when people have hunger it is the lean period, so they don’t have money for weddings. Currently almost every weekend the social enerprise is busy, but there will come a time when there is not much. And sometimes the seasons can change, like looking at a business like our social enterprise, you might have different players in that industry. For example, we have a conference centre here, we never know who might else start a conference centre. So maintaining quality standards and being innovative and doing research on what the market is like, can also help us even if the seasons changes. I think the seasons should make us plan well ahead of time, when things are ok we should never relax thinking that it will be like this forever, because donors are like seasons. You can have 10 donors for the next two years, the other time you will only have one donor, and you are losing skilled personnel in the process. So we need to think ahead and invest for that time when we will not have as many donors.
Like pouring water into a leaking drum. Ensuring the long-term impact of development projects is hard, it is a bit like pouring water into a leaking drum. Some projects are implemented in areas to address challenges that are not a priority problem of the local community. As such, all energy, money, and resources go down the drain without any lasting impact because communities do not have any interest.
Development projects are like the water in the fish pond, its value is seen when there is fish. Whenever the fish has been taken out of it, people start to use the water in the pond for other purposes. The fish represents a donor, and when donors are stop being present, when they leave, it become difficult to sustain the projects.
Donors are like bridges. They are some kind of structures who can fill the gap. Donors have given funds to support the victimized, like on gender based violence, for people to know their rights. All those are being funded by the projects. So in terms of our social enterprise, once it makes enough profits, it will give it to our organisation and they will help the marginalised. So soon our social enteprise will become the bridge, with offering school fees and books and the like. So it's like changing to a new bridge. From donors to our social enteprise. But they are actually different bridges – the first the bridge may have metal reinforcements, which are very heavy. We cannot compare the bridge that the funds from our social enterprise can make with compared with the ones given by the donors. The ones produced by our social enterprise won’t be as huge as the ones by the donors, they will be a smaller. But they can at least make a difference. The ones by our social enterprise are made with local materials, so it is easier to manage and make repairs. For example, if there is a river over there and you want to construct a bridge, we can start with a simple one. It may not be as strong as the donor one, but as time goes by we might say 'ah this one has outlived it’s time, let’s build another one which is bigger and stronger'. So we get those and bring in the reinforcements and make it heavier, more or less like the ones by the donors.
Development projects are like bicycles. Their sustainability requires all critical parts to work efficiently to ensure their long-term viability. NGOs are like the front tyre: when their exit strategy is not well thought out, the impact of the interventions ends immediately after the project phases out because the front tyre is no longer there. The traditional leaders, whose role is very critical, are like the bicycle handles, without them, communities lack direction. Community members are also key; they are like rear tyres which rely on the front tyre to move and the handles to maintain direction. However, without their active participation, the project cannot move like a bicycle without its rear tyre.
The river feeds into the lake. The lake depends on the river and the river depends on the rain. This explains that for any development work to happen it relies on people, here being represented by the rain. The river represents the information that many organisations bring to the people. The lake symbolises the community, and how all the information that organisations bring to the people might sometimes be overwhelming to the carriers, such that at times it becomes difficult to share. When the river overflows then it becomes challenging for the community to utilize such information. Most of the time, organisations rely on a few gatekeepers in the community without reaching down to the core people within the community.
Giraffe
The crocodile in the lake. Donors are a lake, offering a reservoir of funds from which African and economically disadvantaged nations like Malawi can seek financial assistance. Although their support may not always come in the form of direct monetary aid, they often provide essential resources like food, similar to the lake's provision of fish. However, it's crucial to recognize that within this lake, there are also some predators such as crocodiles. Similarly, within donor funding, the presence of corruption and embezzlement by administrators is a constant concern, as the funds are readily available and susceptible to misuse.
Development is like a football team. Development is like football, it requires coordination and support by different people. The community are the players on the field, but they also need to collaborate with the coach, the manager, the trainers, who are the government, NGOs, and other stakeholders. Without coordination, the team loses and for development there is no direction neither is there any tangible progress in terms of positive change.
This is like a road, and YONECO is the yellow fluffy ball, and the goal is the pole with the shiny material, the goal we want to reach symbolizing the ideal society, where all the rights and everything we fight for are accomplished. On the road to our goal we have these gaps that are here, caused by the donor landscape. The landscape is uncertain. And these gaps make us fall down every time we try to move forward. So what we are trying to do with the social enterprise is we are trying to fill in these gaps so we can reach the community. The fillers have different colours, like the yellow one could be the radio, the pink one the car hire. So we’re trying to find these solutions so we can make the journey easier to accomplish our goals.
Some projects come with much hope represented by the shinny ribbons but do not bare any positive results, in some cases things become worse, represented by the torn clothes after the ribbons.
Sustainable development is like boreholes. The two beads represent the organisation which supported the community by drilling boreholes. The cups are representing the boreholes which were drilled around the community. Today people are not struggling to access water, even now that the organisation is no longer working in that community. This is what sustainable development is.
Empowerment is like ants. Ants have the unique character of working in collaboration to build their homes and source food, and just like empowerment, it is always about collaboration to achieve a goal. It does not happen in a closed space but through participation.
Our organisation is like a tree. When it’s sunny you need to find shelter in a tree, when you’re tired of everything you can find a tree. This is a place where you can share ideas, find shelter, protection, finding hope, reassurance that it’s ok to be in that situation but you can still find a way to move ahead. The leaves are ideas.
In this metaphor, my body is like our organisation, and I am wearing this necklace which has beads that represent the challenges of the youth, women and children in Malawi, the burdens. Our organisation has taken all the burdens on the necklace: this includes young girls who are being defiled, women who are being abused by their husbands, employees who are facing sexual violence. These problems are so heavy, weighing down the body, because our organisation doesn’t have enough resources to take care of all of it, sometimes we get negative publicity; but still our organisation fights on, and finds a way to carry it. Our organisation needs to become stronger to be able to carry it. When we realized that the amount of funding that we have is not enough to deal with all the issues that, that’s when we started looking at social enterprise and marketing some of the services that we have. So that whatever we have from those ventures can be used to support those things. Because over the years we’ve been adding things to our agenda, for example recently I’ve heard about climate change and mental health, and so we take it on.
Bearing fruits and a sense of ownership. This tree, which is bearing fruits and money, represents how, if properly managed, donor funded projects can bring results which include financial stability and a sense of ownership in people. As a community we ensured that we not only got the help that was offered, we went ahead to invest by getting into small scale business, including goats, so that our programmes would have a continuous source of funding. So much so that even years after the project had completed, our small businesses are running and the goats have multiplied and been shared, so our community programmes are independent financially. The money drawn at the base of tree were the investments that the community members planted from other projects. The tree represents the businesses that are now established now bearing money-fruits.
Sustainable (youth) development is a mountain. The mountain it is always there, and due to its nature it saves the community at large. With all the trees and rivers running through it, even the aquatic life benefits from the mountain. For sustainable development, it follows the same pattern because it is always there and because it is self-sustaining, it even bears more fruits for the community and even the surrounding. For instance, a community-based organization in Zomba, initially established by a hunger project and later handed over to the community for management, has become an enduring fixture within the community. This organization includes a maize mill that not only serves the local community but also extends its benefits to neighbouring areas. Moreover, the introduction of electricity associated with this project has provided additional advantages to the community and beyond. There is a library and communities around the area benefit addressing the challenge of lack of reading materials in the area.