Last day of GOLD in Malawi for 2011

Everybody here today updating the blog for the last official time.
Today we had our in country debrief, it was attended by the GOLD Co-ordinator, the MAGGA Co-ordinator and 4 national trainers from the central region.
They were extremely grateful for our training and said that our project was very succesful, they highlighted the main reason for low attendance of the sessions as people struggling to get to trainings due to the petrol shortage and money to pay for food during trainings. This is a big problem in Malawi as the ladies who are trainers and leaders do not have the money to travel to deliver the trainings or the funds to stay away from home. Many of the ladies identified that they really wanted to come to our trainings, apparently our trainings have become known around Malawi as being fun and interesting, which is nice!

We have been really pleased to see the difference in MAGGA this year and it seems that they have taken on some advice from last years GOLD team. We have seen a significant amount of girls and leaders who are from different religions and faiths and were really chuffed to see them part of Guiding in Malawi. Last year the organisation was predominantly Christian and GOLD advised them that they should become more multicultural as Guiding is NOT a Christian organisation.

They have also become less strict about uniform and we were pleased to see girls wearing just neckers to signifiy their membership in Guiding, this has allowed girls from poorer backgrounds to gain from Guiding in Malawi.

We have had an amazing 3 weeks on project and are very sad that it is now over. It has been a humbling experience and we realise how lucky we are in the UK. We hope that through our 3 weeks of training we have imparted some knowledge and developed MAGGA to become a stronger organistation in Malawi. We have met fantastic people, danced fantastic dances, ate not so fantastic food and made 5 fantastic friends. We are grateful for the support that we received to make this opportunity a reality and look forward to boring all our friends, family and supporters with photos and stories of our journey here!
We hope the next 3 years of GOLD projects will be as succesful and enjoyable as ours and that by the end of the 5 years MAGGA will continue to move and grow from strength to strength. We are very proud of ourselves for what we have achieved and look forward to following the journey of next years GOLD Malawi team!

Over and out

love
Team Malawi
xxxx

PS - We (Lorelei, Ruth, Elizabeth, Hayley and Kirstie) will carry on updating the blog during our travels to Zambia if you are still interested. Please note that this is purely a holiday and that project has now finished!