GENDER DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN SCOUTING, MALAWI
In Malawi the illiteracy rate among girls and women is quite high compared to the other gender. Females face a number of challenges for them to acquire education hence they pull themselves so low. We talk issues of early pregnancies and the society favors many males to finish school before females. With this reason, females felt incapacitated to do great stuff in their community hence females’ participation in scout activities it has been quite low for the past years as they have been looking down themselves and felt that it’s quite challenging to hold leadership positions in scouting. This also applies to those that are challenged i.e. physical challenges; people living with albinism have been much left behind by the society and they do not think they can do something great.
Empowering Women/Girls in Gender Diversity and Inclusion in Scouting, it has been a worthy life changing project supported by Messengers of Peace amounting to 1500 USD. The project has empowered 35 women and girls with leadership skills in scouting which enables them to run small scout groups in the society. The gap which has been there for too long between males and females in the society it has been quite minimized and women are able to showcase their potential in the community through shaping the lives of young people for the better future. After recruiting 35 young girls and women we had weekly meetings with them where we shared a number of things regarding scouting and the role females are suppose to play in uplifting the community. We had to team up all females in the society and got engaged with them carrying out different scout activities as well as well as imparting them with leadership skills.
The project has brought a huge impact to the society as well as to the family of scouting in the country as the Association of Malawi has gain a new set of leaders who are strongly willing to bring a change and an inspiration to other young girls and women in the society. These young girls and women have taken a big challenge to open their own troops in the community and take a huge responsibility to promote scouting in the area. The scout membership in the country has greatly increased has more than 20 scout groups have been newly opened with more than 500 scouts have been recruited by the effort of the newly trained women and girls leaders. They are able to demonstrate all leadership skills they acquired from the training and bring a big difference.