“If you live in a house like this, something good has happened,” McDonald Kajani told us, orienting us to the context of Manyamula Village in northern Malawi. Last June, he proudly showed us around his four-bedroom home, with new wood floors and glass windows. Whereas before he had a thatched roof, now he has corrugated tin sheets. McDonald and his wife in front of their new, fancy home Out front, McDonald has nine cows and four pigs. Each is an investment. The cows help plow

The Manyamula Community Savings and Investment Promotion Cooperative in rural Malawi is a vibrant force for local development. They provide low-interest loans, farming advice and assistance, and a maize mill for grinding the staple food, as well as a gathering place for community members. So who is it that keeps this organization running smoothly? Spirit in Action is proud to support the salaries for this amazing management team! (Read more about why we fund operations.) Wink

Everything about the Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative in Malawi embodies community spirit in action. They are at once a farmer cooperative, peer counselors, savings and loans providers, a social network, and a vehicle for local economic development and charity. “This cooperative puts people first and strives to meet members’ needs. It helps us do together what we cannot do on our own,” said chairperson Canaan Gondwe during SIA’s visit to Manyamula in June. Read more about the Sma

Last week was SIA Board Member Kathleen King’s first visit to a Malawian village. I appreciated her new-comer observations on what she saw in Manyamula. Here is her post: We spent the last five days in a rural village called Manyamula, Malawi. Our partners here help run a savings and loans cooperative (meaning community members can buy shares in this cooperative and then can receive loans at rates way lower than Malawian banks offer). They may use these loans to improve their

Members of the Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative first came together to fight against the exploitation of banks who were charging high interest rates with short repayment periods. Over the last nine years, they have supported each other in entrepreneurial activities and low-interest loan opportunities. (Read Sylvester’s story here). Now, the Cooperative is expanding its programs to combat another form of exploitation. Many of the members are farmers. And like farmers around the wo

“Greetings from Malawi, and in particular Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative in Mzimba. We send our love and joy to you!” So began the exciting audio message from Canaan Gondwe updating me on the transformation in his community after receiving a grant to bring the internet to their village. The installation process, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a bit rocky. First, the tower grid near their rural area in northern Malawi had never been upgraded and so was using 2G! Then, of course, th

2018 was a fantastic year for SIA globally! We partnered with 10 grassroots community organizations, further developed our Small Business Fund program in Kenya, shared our message at churches in the US, and brought in many new supporters. Before the year ends I wanted to countdown the best moments of the year with you! Count them down… 5. We received monthly donations from 23 donors (+ many more annual donations), expanding the sustainability of our work. Thank you! 4 of the

Last month I wrote about the inspiring story of Denis Kasambala, 16 years old, who received the gift of a pig from his community in last year. His mother died when he was young and his father is often lost in his alcoholism. The Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative members have great hopes for Denis. They wanted him to know his great potential. When teachers sent Denis home from school in October for not having a school uniform, the community stepped up again. Through an act of Shari

Last week I wrote about Denis Kasambala, a sixteen year old boy who received the gift of a piglet from his community in Manyamula, Malawi in May 2017. (Read the story of the gift-giving here.) The members of the local Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative wanted to encourage and support Denis in making a better life for himself. His mother died when he was 9 years old and his father is often missing due to alcoholism. So Denis and his five siblings live with their uncle, who also has

The community has “taken a firm stand to root Denis into success,” says Canaan Gondwe. Denis received a piglet from the community May 2017. This story was originally published in our Fall 2017 Newsletter. I’ll be posting a very exciting update to the story next week on the blog. In May and June [2017] I spent three weeks visiting folks connected with Spirit in Action in Kenya and Malawi. With my team – Mike Hegeman, Dana Belmonte, and Boyd Cothran – we met with seven communit

Have you heard the saying, “money follows money”? It means that once you’ve received some grant funds or donations momentum builds and more people want to give to your project. It happens in crowdfunding campaigns, and it also happens in rural Malawi. When we attended the grand opening of the Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative in May 2017, one of the speakers was Paul Chunga of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). ICRISAT had recently formed a

Last May, as the last bit of twilight faded, I met with the leaders of the Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative in Malawi. The twelve of us sat around a square of tables, in the newly constructed Cooperative offices. It was still warm, and we left the doors open for airflow and for the dim light still in the big open sky. It wasn’t late. Just south of the equator, the sun sets early all year. These men and women are all dedicated to increasing economic opportunity for everyone in the

It was one year ago, that my book, Smart Risks, was launched into the world! In it, my coauthors and I, featured the power of grassroots organizations to make a deep and lasting impact in poverty reduction around the world. One of those effective organizations is the Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative in Malawi. My chapter in Smart Risks, “Local leader’s in the driver’s seat,” chronicles the creation of this group under the guidance and vision of Canaan Gondwe. I gave Canaan a copy

Elias Mkhayi and Lyness Gausi both went to secondary school in rural Malawi. They married young and had dreams of continuing their education to learn a trade. But even though they passed their classes, they were not able to get access to the training courses. They didn’t have basic household items like soap and salt, and sometimes didn’t have enough to eat. Many people they knew had traveled to South Africa for work. According to M’mbelwa District Council near Manyamula, over