The Right Honourable Dr Jean Kalilani is visiting Scotland this week to cement links between the two countries. Dr Kalilani attended a Scotland Malawi Partnership (SMP) Forum and met with representatives of some of the SMP projects. The leads of each project had an opportunity to describe their work, highlight acheivement, and outline the challenges they face. A common theme was for each project to be aware of other initiatives and to avoid duplication of effort. Dr Kalilani thanked the SMP and associated proejcts for their work and outlined the need for future work to be within the framwork being developed by her department. Dr Kalilani has a particular interest in empowering women and promoting equality issues, and has experience of using micro-finance of small business loans to local women, similar to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
The problems of supplying equippment to clinics and hospitals in Malawi was highlighted. The Twinning Clinics Project Director used the analogy of the ‘Wedding List’ to illustrate how Malawian Health Care Workers could list and cost what equippment and materials they needed and post these on a website accessible to colleagues and potential donors in Scotland. Donors could then choose and purchase items from this list. Sourcing of equippment and delivery to clinics and hospitals could then be done in a co-ordinated way, purchasing locally where possible. In the same way that friends and family purchase presents from a couple ‘Wedding List’, donors in Scotland could purchase and thus donate goods known to be wanted and valued by their Malawian Coleagues.
Do post your own comments on suggestions on this topic.
Filed under: Uncategorized
