Six street-connected children affiliated to Mlambe Health and Social Trust (MhEST) have been enrolled into Bwalo Initiative’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two organisations.
The admission ceremony took place on Wednesday, 17 July, 2019 in Zomba during World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) week, as Malawi and the international community emphasised the importance of youth skills development.
The children, aged between 14 and 17, will have the opportunity to horn their brick laying, carpentry, tailoring and plumbing skills from Bwalo Initiative’s training centre in the district.
MhEST Psychiatric Nurse Doreen Bukani said: “These children were unable to continue with proper academics because they were not performing well due to being delayed in school. Consequently, they dropped out on their own and we saw that they were not taking a step further.
“However, there was an improvement in their behaviour so we decided to find a place where they could be trained in vocational skills. These children are in transit. We are keeping them at MhEST but they will not be there forever.
“We would like to thank Bwalo Initiative for taking a chance on these children. All this time they have patiently waited, behaved themselves well and today they are as excited as we are that we’ve brought them here.”
Bwalo Initiative Executive Director said: “We’re happy with this partnership with Mlambe Health and Social Trust, seeing that we’ll impart knowledge to these children that are connected to the street.
“There are various skills that they’ll be able to learn, be it carpentry, brick laying, tailoring and plumbing. My hope is that this agreement and partnership is one that will be there for a very long time.”
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