President Elect Rose and members were pleased to welcome guests from the Act4Africa team to our November Speaker meeting at the Pinewood Hotel. We enjoyed a meal with CEO Martin Smedley and Hilary Yeates, Project Manager, followed by an excellent presentation to bring us up to date with the HEAL Malawi project, which we have undertaken to mark SI Manchester’s 90th year.
Hilary told us about Bernard Makupete, their Malawi Team Manager, and how he is getting on with the project. The aim is to train 20 women as Community Mentors and for each of them to form a group of around 25 young women. This is being done in two groups of 10 and the first group has received their training and formed their own mentoring and savings groups, with a current average of 15 young women in each. At this early stage these figures compare favourably with the charity’s experience of their HEAL project in Uganda. So far six of these groups have opened bank accounts for their savings and received seed funding from the charity.
Hilary also told us the stories of two very different young women who are benefiting from the project. One has never been able to speak out about how she feels and is gaining confidence from the group, and the other is a budding entrepreneur with lots of business ideas. We appreciate hearing these individual stories of the young women we are aiming to help.
The photograph shows Hilary Yeates, our own Barbara Blaber(Finance Administrator Act4Africa), President Elect Rose and Martin Smedley.