Circle of Care: A multigenerational approach to gender justice and education in Malawi

• In Event: Gender Justice in Educational Access and Equity in Global Perspective

Proposal

Proposal: Circle of Care (COC) is an innovative participatory action research effort led by the Institute for Participatory Engagement and Quality Improvement—a Malawian NGO—in partnership with one Traditional Authority and 14 Group Village Heads in Machinga District, Malawi. COC responds to the rapid changes that are occurring in rural Malawian areas as a consequence of 40 years of the AIDS pandemic, climate and environmental change, and the impact of extensive poverty on soc io-political relations in rural communities. About 18% of Malawian children are orphaned, and a significant percentage of them live in GHHs—the statistically poorest households in the country, with absolute poverty rates upwards of 78% (NSO, 2017). COC responds to the increasing socio-economic, education, and health marginalization of GHHs, which threatens GHH members’ ability to remain and thrive in school, to gain social protection when needed, and to be recognized for the remarkable roles they play in school and village life right now. COC aims to foster the wellbeing of grandmother-headed households (GHHs) and the adults and children who live in them; create orphan-responsive schools and GHH-responsive community leadership structures; and transform the availability of extension services and their engagement with grandmothers, so as to support their health and caregiving. COC’s holistic model of care reflects an assets-based approach to GHHs and builds on best practices for participatory research, interdisciplinary collaboration, community mobilization, orphan care, and AIDS-competent schools. It provides modest new resources and leverages existing community assets to undertake a holistic, community-centered approach to supporting GHHs and the children who live in them. COC is rooted in a recognition of and demand for gender and generational justice in education and beyond. The impacts of crises like the AIDS pandemic and climate and environmental change are deeply gendered, as are people’s efforts to survive and thrive in systems marked by neo-colonialism, patriarchy, and global abjection (Sharra; 2016; Ferguson, 1996). COC celebrates the multigenerational work that women overwhelmingly do to secure multigenerational survival amidst radical shifts in daily life, while recognizing the significant structural inequities that they face in navigating current economic, political, educational, health, and socio-cultural systems. This paper will provide an overview of two aspects of COC’s work to illuminate our innovative, multigenerational gender justice approach to supporting communities and the Malawian state in providing responsive education and health services for GHHs. These two project activities are key issues in current debates about international development and international development education. COC’s community-based design research approach sheds new light on ongoing debates concerning the feasibility, operability, and transformative gender potential of cash transfers to female-headed households (in this case, GHHs), and of grandmother and orphan-responsive school and health facilities including. We will explore in depth how COC undertook each of these interventions in full partnership with the communities with whom we work, the impact of each intervention on GHHs’ daily lives, and the lessons that international development (education) and policy actors need to learn in order to create more gender just institutions, governance structures, and life opportunities.

Authors

• Isaac Phiri, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Nancy Kendall, University of Wisconsin-Madison