An economy dependent on struggling agriculture leaves over half the 18.5m population in Malawi in poverty. 80% live in rural areas and rely on farming for income and food security. Lack of access to resources forces farmers with their own land to have to work on other farms, trapping them in the poverty cycle due to low wages and high inflation. A single harvest means that only those with money, or who’ve saved enough from the previous harvest, have food security. (World Bank)

The Tilinanu Co-operative

The Tilinanu Cooperative was introduced in March 2023 to help support and empower the girls and young women that used to live at Tilinanu Orphanage. The girls were reintegrated due to the government guidelines to close institutions housing girls over the age of 16 in 2020. We wanted to slow integration to ensure the girls had the best chance of finishing education and that social welfare had time to monitor and evaluate their ‘home’ environment. So we now support them all through local level boarding schools.

The cooperative is headed up by Gift and Fan, two of the eldest girls that were at Tilinanu. Gift who has graduated from Uni and is now in employment and Fan who is in her second year of university. They are both doing really well and are in a position to help the others.The cooperative was set up to allow the girls to have more freedom and confidence regarding decision making that affects them and their guardians. Gift and Fan are able to help problem solve and action scenarios on the ground in Malawi – and the support is being delivered by the girls for the girls.

 

 

 

Sustainable Family Farms

An economy is dependent on struggling agriculture leaves over half the 18.5m population in poverty. 85% live in rural areas and rely on farming for income and food security. Lack of access to resources forces farmers with their own land to have to work on other farms, trapping them in the poverty cycle due to low wages and high inflation. (US AID)

A single harvest means that only those with money, or who’ve saved enough from the previous harvest, have food security.

Family futures sustainable farming helps vulnerable families living on less than $1 per day who have 6 or more dependants including orphans or the elderly. The program aims to help these family become food secure, provide nutrition for their family and surplus to sell to provide an income for school fees, mosquito nets and essentials for a healthy life. We provide them with farming inputs to farm 1 hectare of land, along with access to adult literacy, teaching, agriculture and business training over two years.

The value of the farm inputs is paid back over two years with 0% interest. This is then invested in farm inputs for another family in the same community. The program keeps giving and recycling the funds to help more people. The program is designed to make family farms self-sustainable through effective management of resources. Families are able to farm their land, (many for the first time) to produce food and  to have excess crops to sell to buy farm inputs for the following year and pay school fees for their children.

The initiative has even been nick-named ‘Nsunga Moyo’ in Chichewa local language, meaning ‘lifesaver’. The scheme has extended to 110 families and will be expanded year on year.

  • 183 families with 2172 dependants now have food security.

Meet Lucy Saulosi

SUSTAINABLE FARM MALAWI WOMAN

At 48 Lucy cares for 6 children and two orphans. She left school in STD 3, and has been working in other peoples fields, being paid in maize rather than money just so she could feed her children. For 5 months of the year, she was able to find work helping other people harvest their crops and the family was living off less than $1 a day.

Thanks to your help with Family Futures Fund, her family is now food secure. Her farm estimates show she will have enough in her own harvest (for the first time) to feed every child every single day, even in famine season. She has enough surplus to sell to send her children to school and buy seeds for next year. She will also be able to repay 50% of the interest-free seed loan this year which will be given to another family to start the program.

She has also had access to our adult literacy program, helping her to run the business. She can now read and write for the first time and support her children’s learning, even reading a book in English. This knowledge has given her access to high breed maize and fertiliser. The sales of her soya have enabled 6 children to go to school! What an incredible lady!

Tilinanu Education Support

Malawi has a young population: 66 percent of its 17 million people are under age 25 and 53 percent are 18 and younger. 16.7 percent of children under 18 are orphans and vulnerable children (US AID)

Tilinanu Education aims to help provide education to children in Malawi, primarily those formally housed at Tilinanu Orphange. Tilinanu is a separate charity to LSU funded through sponsorship and fundraising. It is the heart and soul of Love Support Unite and where the founders started their journey.

LSU deliver all UK admin for the Tilinanu Orphanage charity at no cost. It has delivered a 30-acre farm for food production for the orphanage, solar power and a borehole to the former home Tilinanu Orphanage, when the government program of reintegration was introduced the focus moved to help these children complete their education, and be reintegrated into communities.

Womens Empowerment

‘Malawi ranks 173 out of 188 on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) and has the eighth highest child marriage rate in the world’ US AID

Love Support Unite aims to transform the lives of women through cooperatives such as pig farming. These cooperatives help eradicate poverty and hunger through the distribution of livestock to local people so they may provide for their families.

LSU has helped fund a group of women with a piglet and enclosure. In addition, these women have access to adult literacy training, mother and infant health training, medical outreach and mentoring from LSU staff.

These pigs have now had their own piglets which have been distributed among the group. Each woman now has her own business from the cooperative. One piglet was also given to another group who have now started their own empowerment initiative.

Meet Nachulu

Nachulu is a founding member of the womens enterprise program. She has 6 dependants, 4 of which are children. Starting with one pig between 6 women, they have been able to care for the pig and after it had piglets, each woman received one. Each woman now has a small business, access to adult literacy, medical, mother and Infant Health and mentoring. They have formed a support group to help one another. One pig was given to another set of women who have now started their own enterprise. Your support keeps on giving and these ladies lives have been transformed.