In 2014, I co-founded a Christian nonprofit called Loving Arms Malawi. My close friends Sunga and Livinia are the other co-founders, and I am always amazed by their passion to support and empower young women and girls in Malawi. Loving Arms is a youth-founded and youth-led organization that focuses on raising awareness about sexual violence, and provides free counseling services and access to resources to individuals who need support. Additionally, we are dedicated to promoting girls education, by providing scholarships, giving the girls access to educated/professional role models to encourage them to stay in school and mentor them in their academic/career journey. We also provide professional development opportunities and career coaching for young people.
The motivation behind this start up is that we have lived similar experiences with the young women we serve. We have walked in their shoes, and know how it feels to be in them. My passion is directed more towards girl-child education, and I coordinate most of our education-related projects. Being a first generation college-student from the global south, I know how hard it is for someone like me to pursue education. From my mother’s side of the family, I was the only person who completed higher education, but I am glad to say there are a lot more who are working hard and have embarked on this journey with me. My mother went back to school after she had me and my siblings, which is super awesome! She is my greatest inspiration, my top role model, and my number one fan.
Some of the girls we reach-out to through Loving Arms do not have educated people around them. This makes it is difficult for them to know the importance of staying in school because they have not fully engaged with people who have this type of education, and how it has changed their lives. This is why we bring educated/professional young people to encourage and mentor our girls. Through Loving Arms, I seek to encourage young women and girls to pursue education because I believe it is the one thing that will change their lives because it changed mine. Just as Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.”
Loving Arms also focuses on addressing the issue of sexual abuse, which is a taboo topic in most of our Malawian communities. Watch out for my next post because that is my next topic!
To be continued…
Pempho Chinkondenji's blog 