Mother Group Trainings

FAWEMA, under the iHEARD Project, has organised refresher trainings for mother group committees in 43 target schools in Lilongwe (Malingunde Zone), Dowa (Chinkhwiri Zone) and Ntchisi (Kayoyo Zone) to strengthen their capacity as they execute their roles. A total of 430 mother group members have been targeted with these refresher trainings. These committee members were initially trained in the mother group concepts, and the refresher comes at the right time as schools are gearing up to commence the last term of the academic year.

Under the iHEARD Project, which is an SRHR project funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC), FAWEMA is working with mother group committees to address challenges that adolescents are encountering in their day-to-day life. The committee is an important structure in the quest to promoting girls’ education, and the fight against child marriages and teenage pregnancies.

They support girls with school supplies and act as counsellors to the AGYWs on how to resist peer pressure and harmful cultural practices which can make them to drop out of school. Some girls even face pressure from their own parents to quit school, and the mother groups are there to offer support.

The mother groups also play a critical role in promoting personal hygiene amongst girls by teaching them how to care for themselves, including how to make re-usable sanitary pads out of simple and locally available materials.

Key issues under discussion during these refresher trainings include mother group key roles and responsibilities, how mother groups can continue to coordinate with other schools’ structures to achieve a common goal, mentoring techniques, and resource mobilization.