Women's Center
“Mpumulo” means “rest” in Chichewa. The center was created to be a place of rest for women living with gender-based violence and its consequences. This is the largest of the 3 projects and will include all three of our focus areas, i.e. health, literacy, and income generation. We are currently raising funds to construct a building on the 8 acres (approximately 3 hectares) of land that has already been purchased for this purpose. The center will include a small, nurse-run health clinic where we will provide basic, primary care to women and children. We are planning to have one full-time nurse to staff the clinic who will be assisted by nursing students coming from the U.S. as well as students from Kamuzu College of Nursing in Blantyre.
Health Education
We have been working with a support group for women from Soche Baptist Church since August 2011. The purpose of the project is to provide basic health education for women living with HIV/AIDS and other health issues. Each month, a different body system is selected by the women as the focus for our sessions. Every two weeks, nursing students from Edgewood College provide information about basic anatomy and physiology of the particular body system. The women of the group will then send any number of questions they may have about this particular area of the body. In a follow up session, students provide answers to each of these questions. The group varies in size, i.e. there have been as few as 10 and as many as 56 women in the group at any one time .
Anti-Domestic Violence
In July 2011, a group of 10 men from the village of Mthuthama in Kasungu decided to take on the problem of domestic violence in their community. They have made a commitment to end gender-based violence in their village and 3 other surrounding villages. Since last year, they have completed a door-to-door survey to begin documenting the scope of the problem, have conducted community sensitization campaigns in each of the four villages, and are now beginning to work with individual families.