Concern Worldwide has encouraged Malawians to join Village Savings and Loans (VSL) groups locally known as Banki Mkhonde so as to curb levels of gender based violence (GBV) in the communities.
This was mentioned on Friday in Phalombe during the closing ceremony for a five day training for village agents who were being equipped with knowledge about VSL which they are supposed to use in teaching and guiding different VSL groups in their respective communities.
Monitoring and Evaluation officer for the organisation, Khozapi Mtonga, said most times cases of GBV erupt in the families which struggle to earn a living as husbands fight with their wives because of issues of finance.
We have been training village agents to establish village banking groups in areas where we are operating, the objective of the project is to end GBV cases which are happening in these areas.
There is a link between the two. For example, if at household level there is no money and economic stability, you see the husband and wife fighting and it can result in children stopping going to school, said Mtonga.
He then asked the districts community development office to sustain the initiative once the projects duration ends.
Assistant Community Development officer for Phalombe Sydney Mkata commended Concern Worldwide for conducting the training saying cases of members of the VSL groups losing their property for failing to settle loans will now be over.
It is important to see these groups trained because knowledge is power, we have observed that some beneficiaries have ended up being poorer due to lack of good implementation of things in their groups.
As government we couldnt manage on our own to have such training for these groups, let me thank this organization for coming up with this initiative as this will really help these people to know how we manage VSL groups, Mkata told Malawi24 in an interview.
Apart from the knowledge which they got, the village agents also received bicycles, backpacks, safety boxes among others which the organization believes will be useful all the times they will be meeting the VSL groups.
