Positive Steps Malawi Director (far left) together with Chiendausiku CBO colleagues
Chiendausiku CBO is a CBO in Balaka district which the Creative Centre for Community Mobilization (CRECCOM) is working with under Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi. According to the Executive Director for the CBO, Felix Maliro, before coming into the Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi Activities, the CBO used to work independently from the other community structures and organizations.
“We used to fail to know how best we can operate well in the community with the local community people and some of the expertise on how best we can run our operations such as reporting,” said Maliro
With the coming in of the Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi by CRECCOM, Chiendausiku CBO we received training networking and collaboration which was one of the gaps that were witnessed following capacity-strengthening activities by the Milimo team from CRECCOM. We are now able to network and collaborate with the Positive Steps Malawi organization which is also situated in the same district of Balaka.
According to Maliro, the CBO is now working hand in hand with Positive Steps Malawi organizations in different areas such as in monitoring and reporting of Early Childhood Development (ECD) which is based at Chiendausiku CBO.
“We used to never produce different reports that showcased the impact of the ECD which is located at Chiuendausiku CBO. With the collaboration we have with Positive Steps Malawi, as a CBO we have acquired skills and knowledge in terms of how we can conduct documentation of our projects at Chiendausiku CBO since Positive Steps Malawi is also able to monitor our interventions” said Maliro
To Positive Steps organization, it used failed to achieve all its project interventions in Balaka especially in Chiendausiku area in terms of reporting the progress of the activities at one of its ECDs which is Chiendausiku ECD located at Chiendausiku CBO.
The Executive Director of Positive Steps organization, Clement Chiwaya, has appreciated Milimo Local Capacity Building Activities in Malawi for the positive impact it has invited the organization
“Now, Chiendausiku CBO can produce progress reports to us on how Chiendausiku ECD is fairing and this eases the challenges which we used to have back then in our project interventions on the same. All thanks to Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi by Creative Centre for Community Mobilization which has ensured that networking and collaboration is born between us and Chiendausiku CBO,” said Chiwaya
Maliro also said that Chiendausiku CBO is also able to work with different community stakeholders such as Village Development Committee, Police Forum, and community leaders in dealing with different social problems that might affect local developments in the area which was not the same in the past before the coming in of Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi at Chiendausku in Balaka.
“We are now able to work with such community structures and leaders to deal with different developmental activities. At first, we used to struggle in dealing with different social problems in our communities as a CBO since we lacked some skills and knowledge on dealing with such problems,” said Maliro.
Bester N’dala, a member of the Chiendausiku Child Protection team said that Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi team from CRECCOM trained them on how best they can be able to work well and have good relationships with community members. This helped them to be able to identify different social problems in our community that we would not be able to identify since those people in the community are the ones who tend to know the problems as they are the ones who experience them.
“We used to fail to identify different problems that exist in our community but with the good relationship we have established with our community, we are now assisted by our community members in identifying the problems from people in our community that raise bars of our work. The community members are now able to report social challenges that they face in their communities to us,” said N’dala.
Bearing in mind that different Civil Society Organizations tend to rely much on collaboration and networking with different organizations, the coming of Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi has assisted Positive progress to also strengthen its capacity of inviting partners that would assist it in its operations.