Liyana Zenasi hails from Zenasi village in Chilenje Area Program in Malawi. She is married to Enosi and together, they have 4 children, age ranging from 6 to 18. For years, they have engaged in rain-fed subsistence farming, using traditional farming methods and with no involvement into micro enterprise. Providing for the family’s basic needs and supporting children with school supplies was an uphill task. They could hardly harvest enough from their fields and had no other source of income.

Instead of celebrating adolescence, 19-year-old, mother of two, Malita, recalls days filled with pain and societal seclusion, which resulted in her dropping out of school. Malita remembers that she and her female peers had to endure taunts and stigmas at school where there was no support as they went through adolescence. 

In many rural communities in Malawi, access to safe drinking water remains a challenge. In some communities, people have difficulties even accessing the contaminated water from unprotected sources. This was the case for Mnyakose village in Mutchenda Area Program in Malawi. The people in this village had no access to safe drinking water. The only source of water was the dirty Kaviyere River. During the dry season the river could dry up and people had to dig holes along the river bed looking for water. Women could wait for hours during the dry months to fill a bucket of water.