NGO scoops international award for community justice initiative

Malawian non-profit, the Gender and Justice Unit (GJU), is a recipient of the 2026 Segal Foundation Fighting for Fairness Award for its community justice initiative that empowers women.

Since 2012, the Segal Family Foundation has recognized outstanding leaders of the organizations in five awards categories and this year’s winners, awarded at a gala held in Nairobi, Kenya, hailed from Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The Fighting for Justice Award recognizes organizations and individuals across the world who use their platform to give voice and power to historically marginalized groups and is granted in honor of the foundation’s founder Barry Segal.

Among others, the GJU has been recognized for its legal empowerment and knowledge justice initiatives, most notably the EmpowerLine platform, a legal technology tool launched in April 2025 that provides simplified legal information via a mobile app and a toll-free hotline in multiple local languages, bridging gaps in literacy, cost, and technology access.

Speaking after receiving the award, GJU Founder and Executive Director Sarai Chisala-Tempelhoff dedicated the award to her grandmothers and mother, who shaped her feminism and views on systemic justice, saying, the GJU was established to make the law a practical tool for equality, challenging the idea that a woman’s access to justice should depend on her wealth, location, or social standing.

“Fairness is whether a woman’s work can feed her children. It is whether education can become a route out. It is whether a woman starting again in a new country can build safety for her family. It is whether her labour is recognised or erased. That is also why I chose the law, not as a profession but as a tool. It is the ground the Gender and Justice Unit was built on.

“Through GJU we use legal empowerment, strategic litigation, community justice networks, mobile courts and legal technology to challenge one idea: that justice should depend on where a woman lives, what she earns, or whether the people in authority are willing to believe her,” she added.

According to a citation announced during the award ceremony, Chisala-Tempelhoff is “making sure that women in Malawi receive justice that works for them, according to their culture and circumstances.”

The EmpowerLine is basically a legal library on the phone and women seeking further support dial 4285, a toll free line.

Another Malawian organization, ACADES was awarded the Grassroots Champion Award and Chisala-Tempelhoff hailed the recognition of the two organizations as proof that Malawian organizations are producing powerful models for the African continent.

Apart from the EmpowerLine Platform, the GJU is also implementing the “48 to Infinity” initiative which documents notable Malawian women to combat their severe underrepresentation online—where a search initially revealed only 48 profiles—ensuring their historical contributions are not permanently erased from the datasets training future AI technologies.