Greetings from Malawi

Hello!

My name is Anna, and I'm working here in Lilongwe, Malawi as the HIV/AIDS and Gender Program Officer for the Malawi Union of Savings and Credit Co-operatives (MUSCCO). My role here for the next 6 months is going to be assisting MUSCCO develop an HIV/AIDS and Gender policy. As MUSCCO is an umbrella organization for the Savings and Credit Co-operatives (SACCOs, like Credit Unions) in Malawi, I will also be assisting some of the SACCOs develop policies as well. Impressively, everyone here is quite receptive to the importance of these issues, and mainstreaming cross-cutting issues like gender and AIDS is part of MUSCCO's strategic development plan for the next four years. I feel like I got lucky, coming into a place where people are interested and motivated about working on these issues, and fortunately I won't be facing too many of the challenges that others are facing. Tracy, don't worry - the challenges in Honduras will only make you stronger, and the little headway that you can make will have much more of an impact.

We have done a few visits to villages to get some information from people about what challenges they have in terms of these issues, and have held a Gender Awareness Training workshop for some of the SACCOs up north. I am actually heading South tomorrow to help with another workshop in Blantyre and hopefully will have lots of information to post when I return.

Until then!