Legal Wallet
Sustainable Futures in Africa is delighted to have our partner Stewart Paul as part of the team. Stewart Paul is the Managing Director of Legal Wallet:
www.legalwallet.org
About Legal Wallet
Legal Wallet founded by Alfred Andrew Kankuzi, is a non governmental organisation that connects ICT, Law, Education and Governance. Established in 2015 the organisation uses technology to combat some of the governance pressing challenges and legal Issues that affect Local Malawians. It is motivated and driven by a passion for enhancement and entrenchment of rule of law, citizen participation in the democratic process, respect for human rights and access to justice. It recognises that the ignorance of legal information has led to untold human rights abuses and victimization, observing that the well-being of a society and its subsequent socioeconomic progress cannot be separated from access to legal knowledge, further observing that there are is a knowledge gap between the people of Malawi and the laws that govern them and that access to legal information is essential to the social economic development of any nation.
Vision
Legal Wallet envisions an empowered society full of citizens with necessary tools to fully participate in all democratic processes.
Objectives Of The Organisation
The objects of the Registered Trustees of Legal Wallet shall be to fulfill the following outlined objects:
a) To bring the laws of Malawi closer to the general populace by conducting sensitization campaigns on electronic and print media, tour of rural and peri- urban areas, primary and secondary schools and drop in Legal Wallet Centers that will be established throughout Malawi.
b) To provide the legal aid services to indigent individuals and vulnerable groups such as women, children and prisoners among others and such services shall include but not limited to advisory and litigation services.
c) To protect citizens from unscrupulous individuals purporting act as legal aid service providers.
d) To partner with other local as well as international legal aid service providers in providing legal aid services to indigent and vulnerable individuals.
e) To partner with government and other non- governmental organizations in inculcating democratic governance, rule of law, an enhanced knowledge of the law and participation in development related activities.
f) To provide and promote a synergy between technology and governance issues in Malawi at the grassroots through development of software and mobile applications in the governance sector.
g) To conduct research and conferences on such topics as access to justice, impact of certain laws on different sectors of our society, human rights, rule of law, governance, development and other related issues.
Read more about Legal Wallet here: http://startupcompete.co/startup-idea/social-entrepreneurship-it/legal-wallet/56791
Follow Legal Wallet on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Legalwallet/about/?ref=page_internal
Telling Stories about Community Development; Why “Abundance” takes an integrated development approach
Written by Deepa Pullanikkatil
Post Doctoral Fellow, Rhodes University
Founder, Abundance
“A world of abundance, where there is plenty for humans and where nature is thriving”, is the vision of our non-profit organization in Malawi called “Abundance”. We have often been critiqued to be an organization that is focusing on too many things. “So, what is your area of focus?”, “Aren’t you doing too many different things, could you not narrow your projects down to one or two?” These are some of the questions people often ask us. To answer them, I tell stories; real life stories about people I have met while working in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in our world. These are the people who inspired Abundance, to take an integrated approach to development.
Supporting community participation is key
We were working on a climate change adaptation project in Lake Chilwa Basin in southern Malawi. It is a lake basin with 1.5 million people, predominantly subsistence rural communities with natural resource dependent livelihoods. We were confident in our thinking that we were providing ideal interventions for climate change adaptation to communities in the Lake Chilwa Basin. Feeling quite satisfied in the knowledge that we knew exactly what the communities needed to adapt, we brought forth interventions such as solar fish dryers, fuel efficient stoves and efficient fish smoking kilns; we promoted conservation agriculture, we provided trainings on climate change and with the communities we planted, lots and lots of trees. But when we went to the villages, we realised that women’s participation was not as good as it should be and that men had other challenges they wanted to share with us. Men came to us with their two main concerns, cholera and bilharzia (a debilitating disease caused by parasitic flatworms called schistosomes affecting the urinary tract) and asked us if we could do something about that. Women said that poor access to family planning and reproductive health services were the challenges they faced. The reasons for their reduced participation was now clear. How could men attend meetings when disease burden was so high? How could women participate actively when they had so many children or so many sick people to care for?
Why interconnectedness matters
Faced with the dilemma of how to address the health and family planning needs of communities through a climate change adaptation project with a specific livelihoods and environment focus, we realised that the way forward was to use an integrated approach. We could no longer take a sectoral approach, because communities did not live their lives in compartments. They lived integrated lives with needs that were interconnected. If we wanted to help them adapt, then we had to understand and work with interconnectedness. These often cuts across sectors and does not fall under a narrow themes of livelihoods or environment. We had to open our eyes to these new perspectives.
In order to address the cholera and bilharzia challenges, we environmentalists were required to learn about disease and parasitology. We learnt that the challenge of bilharzia was partly created by well-intentioned irrigation coverage expansion. This was a method intended to help communities improve agriculture and adapt better. But in areas where bilharzia is endemic, increasing irrigation coverage allow snails which host the bilharzia causing parasite to spread to such waters, thus spreading bilharzia in to areas where previously it was not prevalent. In such a situation, environment, irrigation and health are intertwined. Without integrated planning there is risk of creating negative impacts through well-intentioned projects. We collaborated with health institutions and undertook research. We found prevalence of bilharzia was indeed high – up to 49% in some areas. The publication of the research was shocking to many and since then, a lot of attention shifted to the neglected disease of bilharzia, and help poured in.
It’s nice when people think you’re an expert
While doing research on bilharzia, as environmentalists, the first hurdle we had to overcome was that of our own ignorance, or lack of interest to work on a field that we knew nothing about. Mostly it was the fear of appearing ignorant, after all don’t we all like being the “experts”? We as environmentalists had to learn about health, about parasitology and diseases. Going beyond our comfort zone was a humbling experience and finally, in the end, as thousands of people got treated for Bilharzia, it was satisfying to see community needs met, exactly the way they should be met.
Starvation or prostitution: Families seeking solutions to problems caused by climate change
Global Challenges: from poverty, to environmental protection, from gender equality to health
In the name of “development,” in the name of “aid,” in the name of “international research and innovation,” billions of pounds and dollars have been spent from the Global North on challenges materialising in the Global South: from poverty, to environmental protection, from gender equality to health. Countless academics and administrators have focused innovation, invention, programmes, and practices on supporting development in the “developing world.” I question how much longer we might fund and focus resource and expertise from the global north to help to “fix” the problems of the Global South.
This flow of aid money, resources, and increasing global morality and mobility is building ever broader pipelines between the Global North and South, and yet there seems to be a terribly unsettling consistent characteristic of this development (of this globality). The reality is that the Global North (and to be fair an ever-decreasing section of the Global North) becomes ever more powerful and prosperous, ever more resilient to climate change; and the Global South addresses an ever-decreasing area of fertile land, an ever-growing population of people living in poverty, and an ever-increasing threat of food security. For all of our good intention, and all of the promises of funding and expertise, our “global challenges” persist and increase.
Something surely is going wrong. Something fundamental is missing. And it is not good intention that’s missing, it is not intelligence, and it is not funding resources. Last year, the UK Government committed 1.5 billion pounds to research into Global Challenges. Much of this money has been taken directly from budget previously held by the Department for International Development. The investment has moved from resourcing initiatives on the ground through charities and regional projects in Development Assistant Category (DAC) Countries to resourcing research into challenges in these same places. To spend this money, many clever, ambitious, and well-intentioned academics will design, propose, and articulate research and innovation that promises to make the world a better place. Many of them will do this from their office or with a group of colleagues in and around their office. Some of them will travel and have conversations with partners “in-country” – all of them will be racing to prove their capacity to spend this money wisely and productively. It is this same Global Challenge Fund that motivated me and resourced me to facilitate and report on the first meeting of the Sustainable Futures in Africa Network.
I proceed with a determination: That this network, that this recipient project of UK Research Council funding, works differently, and works with difference.