People in the two Eastern Region districts, Mangochi and Zomba have hailed a $75M five-year USAID-funded Resilience Food Security Titukulane Project for transforming their lives.
Titukulane which commenced in 2019 has been a “bailing out” project as communities in the two districts as people are relying on it to meet their day-to-day needs.
The Project which has the cross-cutting objectives of gender equality, governance and accountability, youth engagement, and environmental safeguarding is being sponsored by Care Malawi with funds from USAID in partnership with Emmanuel International, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM), Save the Children, and WaterAid.
Dan Abbott, Care Malawi Chief of Party for the project has commended the communities from the two districts and the implementing partners saying the project has, despite being hit by the Covid 19 Pandemic, been successful since it was launched.
“We are drawing near [the end of the project] and today [Tuesday] we were reflecting on the experience and more than 250, 000 individuals in Zomba alone have been reached by the project and more than 550, 000 in total have been reached by the project.
“Project participants themselves presented how the project has improved incomes, improved maternal and child health, and also to strengthen community resilience to disasters. It has been successful, though it had a slow start during the COVID pandemic but over the last three years, it has been delivering its results not only for the project period but also for positioning the community and government to really care about the outcome of the project,” he said.
Abbott said the project faced several challenges including Covid 19, Cyclone Freddy, and drought which affected the households and communities.
Rhoda Mlenga, one of the beneficiaries of the project and cluster leader of the Group Village Head Botoman from Traditional Authority Mlumbe in Zomba said the project has helped her in eradicating some of the challenges that she was facing before.
“I’m now able to provide my family with a balanced diet using locally available foods. The project trained us to utilize foods like okra, making them useful and reusable in the future,” she said.
Titukulane Project aims to support implementation and ensure effectiveness of the Malawi National Resilience Strategy (NRS), which is established to guide investments in agriculture, reduce impacts and improve recovery from shocks, promote household resilience, strengthen the management of Malawi’s natural resources, and facilitate coordination between government institutions, civil society organizations, and development partners.
The project delivered strong outcomes in fiscal year 2023 (FY23) across its three Purpose Areas, surpassing its Life of Award (LOA) target by 6% by reaching 540,485 individuals in 159,847 households, 172,240 of whom were youth.
