Kumudzi Eco Learning Centre to turn into a fully fledged hospitality facility

Kumudzi Eco Learning Centre, an institution that was established to cater for training programmes in agriculture, environment conservation and basic economics for its surrounding communities at Bunda in Lilongwe, is taking further steps to become a fully fledged hospitality facility.

The centre, owned by David Mkwambisi, a Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) Associate Professor  of Environmental Sustainability, is in the final stages of completing its lodge and already has a conference hall, a bar as well as sports recreation facilities.

Kumudzi Learning Centre, in collaboration with LUANAR (formerly known as Bunda College of Agriculture) caters for capacity building targeting the surrounding communities as well as government departments and the corporate world.

“We provide capacity building to the communities by providing training on environment, agriculture, economics or any other training on demand,” Mkwambisi said.

“We do that in collaboration with LUANAR and some of the training is done by LUANAR graduates. We also want to organise several strategic courses for managers and government officials.

“The concept is that the managers and government officials should start thinking strategically in doing their work.

“We are constructing a lodge so that we ably host such strategic courses because we already have a conference room which many companies and organisation have taken advantage of.

“The hospitality business is also aimed at allowing the surrounding communities to interact with people from the urban areas — to give them a different life and also to offer employment.

“The other component of our services here is sports. We are targeting minority games like volleyball, netball, chess, bawo — the games that are not getting the required attention of sponsors.

“As a family we do sponsor different sports [disciplines] at different levels. We also want to form a village netball team and we will start by making this a sports training centre.”

Mkwambisi said he plans to engage reputable netball coaches to train young girls around the centre in order to form such team that could perform in the Central Region Netball League.

“With such a team, the girls and the rest of the communities will be learning a lot from others when they shall be hosting visiting teams and, who knows, they might produce their own Mwawi Kumwenda,” Mkwambisi said.

“We want also train young boys and girls to learn volleyball or even start to play chess. The whole thing is to try and empower the communities to reach a certain level rather than neglecting them.

“Sport can be a developing tool. We can be nurturing talent for other top teams to poach from.

“Since it’s a family business, we are doing things slowly but we are hoping other stakeholders can join us to make into a big business venture. We are creating employment here like students, graduates and from the communities as support staff.

“In future, we would like to have interns from the colleges to come learn more skills here and to design training programmes and host it here,” Mkwambisi said.

The centre is also suitable for family outings as it has summer huts, barbecue  facilities plus playing courts for netball, volleyball and basketball. It is also ideal for team building for companies’ staff and several companies are already taking advantage of it.

Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :

Sharing is caring!