As reported, due to the Corona pandemic and the associated long-term assembly restrictions
and school closures, our youth center at St. Mary's Girls Primary School in Karonga
could not be continued in the planned way. In the meantime, many members of the peer
group who were supposed to pass their knowledge to subsequent grades have unfortunately
also left the school, so that a relaunch of activities no longer seems meaningful.
At the same time, the Corona pandemic has caused that adolescent girls in particular
dropped out of school and education, which has subsequently led to an increase in
the number of teenage pregnancies in many areas. We were therefore increasingly
contacted last year about continuing our engagement in the Karonga district, particularly
in the area of family planning.
The positive experience we had during the now completed Covid 19 project with the
young and engaged team of Pamoza Tingakwaniska, which had realized this project on
site in Karonga, encouraged us to follow up on an idea submitted to us by the Pamoza
team:
Television and cinema are not yet widespread, especially in the more rural areas
of Malawi. For this reason, theater performances, which often take place outdoors,
have a particularly broad impact. Therefore, within the framework of a 4-month pilot
project "Theater for Change", the special opportunities of theater performances are
to be tested in order to specifically approach the local population. A total of 12
dramas on topics of sexual and reproductive health, women's rights and questions
of their self-determination will be created and performed at various locations in
the project area, including the Cultural and Museum Centre Karonga.
In addition, a key success factor of the Covid-19 project was the dissemination of
information through Radio Dinosaur and Radio Tuntufy, which broadcast in northern
Malawi in the local languages of Tumbuka and Ngonde, which are not served by state
radio. As a result, they are the only medium that actually reache all segments of
the population in northern Malawi, especially in the districts of Karonga and Chitipa
with over 600,000 inhabitants, and is the most important source of information for
most residents.
Also in our new project we want to use this information channel intensively, on the
one hand to inform the population about the theater performances, on the other hand
to sensitize them again for issues of sexual and reproductive health and the related
topics.
