Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Mr. Chifundo Chibaka
Months after working with the youth club in my community, I feel like we have made tremendous efforts in increasing the role the youth can play in the development of the community. A few weeks ago, we had a training of trainers where all 22 members of the club were trained by a local nurse on the issues of COVID-19 and how we can relay this information to our respective villages. CorpsAfrica recently partnered with the Mastercard Foundation and I as a Volunteer had an opportunity to tap into a generous grant to prepare my community in the face of the pandemic. As a youth club, we have managed to reach over 11 (still counting) village heads and their subjects and sensitised them about the pandemic (story for another day).
As a club, we meet at the local health centre twice a week. But there was a problem. The health centre was on the verge of closure for the second time in just four months. The facility is just a year old and it was built with the support from Good Health and World Servants. It was recently handed over to the government and is still in transition to be receiving an annual monetary support from the government. As such, the health centre doesn’t have a paid ground labor to help in maintaining the hygiene around the premises. In addition to this, the health centre doesn’t have a water supply system as such villagers have a weekly roster for supplying water to the health centre.
A few weeks ago, after the health authorities toured the health centre, they recommended that the health centre’s premises, including a filled up incinerator, be cleaned up or have the facility temporarily closed since it was no longer conducive to serve its purpose. As a club, we decided to take up this task to clean the premises and save the day.
We partnered with the health centre authorities who supplied us with gloves, aprons, masks and other working materials. We volunteered to clean up the premises as a token of appreciation for their continued gesture to allow us use their facilities.
