Advocacy

It is 5:00AM, the weather looks promising, the day looks very bright as well. Tiyamike* smiles as she yawns and reluctantly wakes up to face the day, after all its Monday, and she needs to go school. Tiyamike* 16, has always dreamt of becoming an influential woman in her society and country, an Education Minister. She goes to school everyday eager to learn something new that will shape her future.

Taking up their role as nutrition champions, the Parliamentary Commission on HIV/AIDS and Nutrition recently went on a nutrition fact finding mission to obtain firsthand information on the nutrition situation in parts of the country. The committee intends to use their findings as evidence to lobby parliament to increase funding towards nutrition. 

For the fact finding mission, the committee went to various sites in Kasungu, Ntchisi, Mulanje and Blantyre districts.

Sitting in the district council hall on that hot October morning and listening to members of the Mwanza District Nutrition Coordinating Committee (DNHA) taking turns to describe how late they receive their monthly funds from Central government and how the figure continues to decline month in, month out, one conclusion came to mind—fair financing goes beyond the figures that government publishes in the pink book—the national budget. Fair financing is about how timely that money is disbursed to district councils and how adequate it is to implement planned activities.

Reading and writing—they seem like very simple skills, don’t they? If you are reading this you have probably answered yes but 775 million people will disagree with you. These are the people that according to current global statistics lack minimum literacy skills.

September 8^th is international day of literacy. It is a day that serves to remind the world about the importance of literacy, its status today and how that consequently affects our society.