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Gender Min­is­ter Mary Navicha made the remarks in Lilongwe City yes­ter­day dur­ing the sign­ing of a three-year memor­andum of under­stand­ing (MoU) between the min­istry and World Vis­ion Malawi.

Navicha said the min­istry was com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that the agree­ment trans­lates into prac­tical inter­ven­tions that address chal­lenges affect­ing vul­ner­able pop­u­la­tions.

She said the suc­cess of the part­ner­ship would be meas­ured by improve­ments in people’s lives.

“It is import­ant for us to work together to reach as many groups as pos­sible and trans­form their lives,” she said.

Navicha added that repor­ted cases of gender-based viol­ence were declin­ing, attrib­ut­ing the trend to increased aware­ness.

The min­is­ter said this threeyear agree­ment would provide an oppor­tun­ity to strengthen inter­ven­tions that address the chal­lenges vul­ner­able groups face, which include per­sons with dis­ab­il­it­ies, women, chil­dren and the eld­erly.

The agree­ment is expec­ted to provide a more struc­tured frame­work for col­lab­or­a­tion between the gov­ern­ment and World Vis­ion Malawi, par­tic­u­larly in dis­ab­il­ity inclu­sion, child pro­tec­tion, com­munity devel­op­ment and pro­grammes that sup­port vul­ner­able groups.

World Vis­ion Malawi Coun­try Dir­ector Fran­cis Dube said the MoU would strengthen account­ab­il­ity and provide a more struc­tured approach to imple­ment­ing the organ­isa­tion’s ongo­ing pro­grammes in 10 dis­tricts.

He said the agree­ment would also improve policy coordin­a­tion and strengthen exist­ing inter­ven­tions, includ­ing school feed­ing pro­grammes in early child­hood devel­op­ment centres.

Cur­rently, World Vis­ion Malawi is sup­port­ing 17,000 chil­dren with dis­ab­il­it­ies through its dis­ab­il­ity inclu­sion pro­grammes while its microfin­ance ini­ti­at­ives have reached 139,000 indi­vidu­als across the coun­try.

He added that the organ­isa­tion’s school feed­ing pro­grammes had bene­fit­ted 70,000 chil­dren, par­tic­u­larly those attend­ing early child­hood devel­op­ment centres.

“Mov­ing for­ward, with this part­ner­ship, we look for­ward to scal­ing up these inter­ven­tions to reach more people and improve the lives of the com­munit­ies we serve,” Dube said.