Action Aid Malawi donates vehicles to NGOs to ease operation challenges
Action Aid Malawi, one of the country’s principal recipient for the Joint TB/HIV Grant from the Global Fund, on Monday handed over vehicles to Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Dignitas to enable the two organisations manage their day to day activities.
NCA and Dignitas are the newest partners of Action Aid Malawi working on an Adolescent Girls and Young Women Module in Thyolo and Chikhwawa respectively, beginning June last year.
The two organisations got one vehicle each during the official handover ceremony held at Action Aid Malawi head office in Lilongwe.
According to Program Manager for the Joint TB/HIV Grant at Action Aid Malawi Dalitso Kuphanga, NCA and Dignitas really needed these vehicles for the commendable job they are doing.
He said: “The work of these two organisations require that they should visit the hard to reach areas and such strong vehicles are needed if they are to accomplish their mission.”
Kuphanga added that NCA and Dignitas have registered significant achievements in the period leading to December last year, noting that they have managed to establish girls clubs, train teachers and committees.
“They have also managed to reach out to many girls with HIV testing and counseling, sexual and reproductive health, introduced sanitary pads and vocational skills”.
And taking his turn, Procurement and Logistics Coordinator at NCA, Rodney Phiri, commended Action Aid Malawi for the gesture, saying the new vehicle is a relief to his organization.
“We were spending well over a million a month hiring 1 or 2 vehicles to keep operations moving. With the coming in of this vehicle it adds to two with the one we already had. At times we had to borrow from Thyolo DHO’s office”.
Phiri said he believed these savings from hiring vehicles will go a long way in advancing his organization’s sensitisation work to the adoloscent and young women in Thyolo.
NCA came to Malawi as a church development partner, and is not registered as an implementing partner.
As much as we should appreciate the work being done, let the laws and agreements/ MoUs be binding.
There are key church organisations that can implement and are already implementing with great success the very same projects. And then there is also Christian Aid which has turned itself almost into a local FBO.
Why is government not checking on such abuse?
Very commendable gesture. AGYW is a vibrant Initiative.
Why giving international organizations, there are lots of local organizations with capacity to implement these interventions.
NCA has been a donor since they came, they are the ones who have put up alot of infrastructure in CHAM Nursing Colleges, so this donation could have benefited another local organization