Ministry of Gender, Child welfare and Community services
The Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services delivers its services through four main programmes falling under the Departments of Community Development; Gender Affairs; Youth Development; and Social Welfare with Technical and Administrative support from Departments of Planning and Administration. The Ministry is situated in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. The Ministry is carrying out a number of programmes in order to achieve its vision, mission andStrategic Objectives. For details on the Ministry's achievements please visit the achievements.
Vision
To facilitate the creation of a vibrant, self-reliant and empowered Malawian society
Mission statement
To facilitate the socio-economic empowerment of women, men, girls and boys to enable them become self- reliant and active participants in the process of national development through community based approaches.
Our Motto
Equal participation for sustainable development
Strategic Objectives
Specifically, the Ministry’s policy objectives are: ·    
  • To improve the socio-economic status of women and men and promote their rights through programmes for economic empowerment, nutrition, legal protection, welfare, and reproductive health including family planning and safe motherhood.
  • To improve the survival, protection and development of children. ·   
  • To assist the needy and disadvantaged members of the population such as orphans, the aged, destitute, abandoned children, juvenile delinquents, the youth, victims of abuse and drug addicts to become productive members of their families and society. ·   
  • To improve the living standards of people in both rural and urban areas by increasing their levels of awareness of the various development programmes and encourage local initiatives and participation in the development process. · 
  • To increase literacy levels among adults especially women and promote self-reliance in order to make them active participants in the Poverty Alleviation Programmes. ·
  • To promote and advocate gender equality in the planning and implementation of development programmes.
  • To promote sustainable livelihood and health among the youth<<Collapse

Challenges

Although Malawi has in the past been implementing various structural reform programs to increase economic growth and therefore reduce poverty, these programmes have not translated substantially into improvements in the well being of the majority of the Malawians. This is evidenced by the persistent poor and deteriorating social indicators such as high illiteracy, poor nutrition, poor health status, which are compounded by low incomes and gender inequalities.

 The Government fully emphasizes that even the vulnerable groups have the right and potential to participate in decision making about things that affect their lives. However, this poses a very big development challenge for the Government and its development partners due to financial constraints. It requires concerted multi-sectoral and holistic approaches to emphasis the desired impact on the poor. 

 Certain undesirable elements that impede development still persist and the challenge is how to effectively remove such elements to promote sustainable growth and reduce poverty. For example:
  1. Adult illiteracy is still very high at 58% and is worse among women;
  2. With the escalating HIV/AIDS pandemic, the problem of orphans is worsening, with an estimated 1,200,000 orphans requiring assistance;
  3. Escalating unemployment among youths;
  4. Persistence of gender inequality at almost all levels;
  5. Low economic status of women;
  6. Increasing violation of children’s rights;
  7. Inadequate preparation of children to develop their full potential to learn, grow and develop into responsible adulthood and increasing cases of juvenile delinquency;
  8. Negative attitudes by members of communities towards development work and over-reliance on Government for handouts due to misunderstanding of democracy.
The Government has now emphasizes that no meaningful development can be achieved when a country is deeply embedded in dire poverty. To address this situation the Government has introduced a general policy framework for poverty reduction as a strategy for increasing economic growth which emphasizes the need to promote sustainable poverty reduction through enhancement of active participation of the poor who are also the most vulnerable in the Malawian society. The Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services is particularly concerned with the above situation and given the required resources, it should be able to make a difference in the next three years or so.<<Collapse
Back to the top