When a CARE project began to work with a community in Sungeni village, Cecilia chose to take her life into her own hands. Four years on, things have never looked so hopeful. © Tim Freccia / CARE
For Cecilia Chilonga, a community facilitator in the small village of Sungeni in Malawi, the pain of the 2003 famine continues to echo as she supports her two children.
The famine, said to be one of the worst famines to ever hit the people of Malawi, left her a widow. Alone, weakened by hunger and scared, Cecilia feared for the future of her family. ‘I was facing a lot of challenges, I didn’t have seed to grow, I couldn’t earn money to buy clothes – we were considered one of the poorest families in the community,’ she says.
After receiving good quality seed from CARE and learning how best to look after her crops and multiply her seeds, Cecilia joined one of CARE’s village savings and loans groups. With the group, she was able to save some of her valuable income and buy her very first goat. As things began to improve and Cecilia’s life in the village changed, so did Cecilia.
Once reserved and shy, her experience and training from SMIHLE (supporting and mitigating the impact of HIV and AIDS for livelihood enhancement) gave her confidence and contagious optimism. ‘When my husband was alive I considered myself someone who couldn’t make a decision. I would always just say nothing, I couldn’t participate.’ Those days are well and truly behind her now.
‘From SMIHLE I learnt to speak in public with confidence and now I can work hand in hand with other people to raise our concerns with the whole community.’ As a community facilitator, Cecilia spends her days supporting other women and communities to overcome poverty through the SMIHLE project. Over the past few years she has shared her experience and provided training to more than 450 households in surrounding villages, ensuring they too can benefit and learn how to bring lasting change to their communities.
‘SMIHLE has been an eye-opener for me, helping me identify my own problems which I couldn’t see in the past, and now I can work out my own solutions for those problems.’ Speaking about her successes, Cecilia’s face lights up and her voice booms, its no wonder she now has so much sway in her community; her passion and drive is written across her face and is shown in her thriving vegetable garden. Today, she’s a valued and respected member of her community, an inspiration, a mother and at last, a leader.
Five years ago, Cecilia never thought the twist of fate that brought such turmoil to her and her two children would change her life as it has. Yet, she’s taken every opportunity with relentless dedication to bring change and hope for her family and community. Within her small village of Sungeni, she is an example of the potential that lies within each and every woman across Malawi.
‘I’m very proud of what I do and I’ve learnt a lot about how to improve the livelihood of my family,’ she says smiling proudly in her CARE facilitator t-shirt. With smoke billowing from the roof of her simple mud house as lunch for her children boils on the stove, she assertively states, ‘each and every woman has her own courage to support her family,’ and, she is right.
