MUSCCO

I have now been in the office at MUSCCO (Malawi Union of Savings and Credit Co-operatives) for a week now. I have my own office, desk, phone and internet, which is more than I was expecting when I pictured being an intern in Africa! I’m the new HIV/AIDS and Gender Program Officer here, and my job for the next 6 months is helping MUSCCO develop an HIV/AIDS and Gender policy. They have already hired a gender consultant who has done the initial research and gender audit of the organization and once she submits her report, we can start formulating a gender policy and an implementation plan. Unfortunately, writing policies was the one thing we did not cover in IPMP, so I’m going to have to learn pretty fast! lol. I’m also going to be working with some of the smaller community savings and credit co-operatives (SACCOs) to help them develop and implement their own policies, and I hope, help them to write proposals for funding so they can implement some community education programs.

There seems to be a lot of work to do, although I feel as though I haven’t contributed too much yet. I guess I’m still getting a feel for the place and trying to take my own initiative to figure out what little things I can work on. Everyone else seems pretty chill here too, so I guess I can follow suit! When in Rome... or Lilongwe, for that matter.

I’m looking forward to going to a Gender Awareness workshop in the north next weekend, held for the Northern SACCOs and I’ll be doing some interviews there to find out what effects HIV/AIDS has had on the communities and how the SACCOs are being affected, as well as what they are doing to mitigate the affects.

Everyone here is really nice and helpful and I feel like this organization is doing a lot of good work. It’s a bit different that the usual NGO development, because it is an association of credit unions and therefore a for-profit business. This is actually quite good for the sustainability of their projects because the purpose of the SACCOs is to be self sustaining and therefore there is little reliance on outside donors! Study Groups from the SACCOs get together to discuss issues in their communities and come up with their own local solutions, and MUSCCO’s role is mainly just capacity building and connecting Study Circles with other organizations that can help them run programs.

As during our orientation with CCA in Ottawa, I feel that I have been converted to the co-operative movement! I really think that Co-ops are the way to sustainable development...