WEATHER ALERT:

Due to weather conditions, all in-person daytime and evening programs have been canceled across the church’s locations for Wednesday, except for the Recovery programs and Food Pantry at Overland Park. Decisions for Thursday daytime programs will correspond with local school district decisions and will be posted on the church’s website.

IMPORTANT:

Scheduled programming has resumed for Thursday, February 13 at all Resurrection locations.

Blog 8

11/18/24

Malawi III: November 7-19, 2024

Our final stop on our mission trip was with Zoe-Malawi. We were invited to the Zoe office in Mtendere and were greeted by the staff, who provided us with a presentation on the project. We learned that the program participants are youths up to age 20 who have been orphaned (in Malawi, that means having no or only one living parent) and who have been identified by their community leaders as being in need of support.

The youths, when accepted into the program, are provided with various trainings in areas such as business, hygiene, information technology, etc. and are encouraged to let the program leaders know what dreams they have for a profession that would allow them to support themselves and their families.

The Zoe staff discussed three participants who had successfully completed the program and are now operating their own businesses, with each of them having multiple diverse businesses in their ownership. Each of these participants had similar childhoods, which included the loss of their father at a young age and the hardships (food insecurity being chief among them) that inevitably follow that kind of loss.

We then left the office and visited four Zoe participants in the area. The first stop was to the shop of Bridget Sibande, who has received three months of training as a tailor and now has her own business. Bridget makes the most beautiful and unique dresses, and also tailors them to fit. Her work now supports herself, her mother and four siblings. Bridget is not done chasing her dreams as she is working toward opening a training academy to reach other young people who aspire to become a tailor.

We left Bridget’s shop and drove a short distance to a Zoe group project that is being supervised by Phaless Njobvu, group mentor. This project is the raising and sale of pigs and is currently housing around twenty of the animals. Several Zoe participants have ownership of the pigs and the purpose of the project is to teach business and entrepreneurial skills.

Another short drive and walk, and we found ourselves in the salon of Groliah, whose father died and left her mother and siblings without an income stream. Life for the family was very hard and their living situation and food security were often in doubt with many instances of the family having no food or shelter. The Chief of their village put the family in contact with Zoe and, fortunately, Groliah (as the oldest sibling) was accepted to the program. When she entered the program, Groliah was able to express her dream of opening a salon. Three months of training in business and hair styling was provided by Zoe, along with some seed money for shop space and equipment.

Groliah’s shop is a one-chair operation in a small space of roughly 100 square feet. In addition to hair styling and product sales, Groliah also charges a small fee for community members to charge their phones at her shop. With the money she makes from the business, Groliah supports mother and siblings, who have all had to drop out of school to work. Groliah has also followed in the footsteps of many of her Zoe colleagues by leasing one acre tract of farm land to grow and sell corn. In all, the profits from her businesses have allowed her to build a house a short three minute walk to her shop, which is a blessing as she takes her hair dryer home with her nightly to prevent its theft from the shop. When asked, Groliah said she would also like to open a salon training school.

From there we proceeded to the carpentry shop of Francis, 18 and his younger brother Chikambuso, 16 (Chikambuso is not in the Zoe program but is apprenticing under Francis). Francis’ has two other siblings and his mother to care for and the family did odd jobs around their community to be able to eat when their father died.

The Community leaders referred the family to Zoe and Francis, as the eldest sibling, was accepted and trained in several areas, including business. When Francis chose carpentry as his profession, he was provided with money for living and six months training, and upon completion of his training was given the tools he now uses to skillfully make and repair furniture and other items. Francis is now able to provide food for his family and pay tuition for his three siblings, so that they can finish their primary and secondary schooling. Unsurprisingly, Francis has also leased a farm for planting and selling corn, and also has the ultimate goal of opening a video show room in addition to his current business ventures.

Another short drive and half mile walk brought us to the Bright Shop (convenience store), where we met Bright Swande, age 18. After their father died, Bright and his mother and two siblings had a very difficult time finding food to eat or getting to school. Zoe came to his village and he applied and was chosen to join the program. Training in business and hygiene was provided along with money to open a shop, which is located a little ways off the main highway but in the middle of a busy community. Bright reports that he stays quite busy at the shop and is doing well financially. He is also in the process of starting a second business trading corn seed. Bright sources the products he sells at local markets and has a profit margin of around 20%.

Bright, who has had the shop for nine months, is close to finishing the program and is able to support himself and family, in addition to paying tuition for his siblings. His dream is to support siblings’ continued education and he also wants to go to university to study pharmacy. He is the chair person of the Zoe Victory-Mtendere cohort.

Our final stop on the tour was at a small, red brick building that is owed by the Zoe Victory-Mtendere group, which is a short walk from Bright’s store and is used by the group for meetings. In attendance were all 22 members of the group, along with the Zoe facilitators who had been with us on our journey.

The first order of business was the taking of the roll and a recap of the rules of the program, which include being respectful of members and others, no marriage while in the program, prayer before every meeting or

group event and to attend all compulsory training. The group also discussed going to the nearby juvenile detention facility to bring needed items and clothing.

We were then treated to a three-act skit entitled United We Stand, Divided We Fall, which discussed the widespread issue of child marriage in Malawi. In the skit, a grandmother is trying to marry her 10 year old granddaughter to much older man who has money and will buy them food, but the granddaughter, who is a Zoe program participant, flatly refuses and reminds her grandmother that marriage is forbidden by the program. The grandmother, thinking the Zoe program was getting in the way of the family being able to eat, insists and invites the man to come back after she has convinced the girl to acquiesce to the proposal.

The young girl, being fearful of marriage to a much older man and how it would impact her participation in the Zoe program, goes to the village chief for help. The chief agrees that the proposal is inappropriate and intervenes, telling the grandmother about the Zoe program and how the girl, upon program completion, will be able to provide for the family much better than the older man ever could. Upon hearing this, the grandmother sees her error and the chief bans the older man from the village.

To a person, each member of the Resurrection team was thoroughly impressed with the youth of the program and how they had been able to overcome dire circumstances to provide a better life for their families. We left the group with a more refined sense of the urgency of the problems facing kids like these in the villages, and more determined to do what we can to support the Zoe project through Resurrection. If you feel called to help, please go to cor.org/next and click on the Global Ministries link for more information on how to support this very important initiative.