Oxfam trains CDSS teachers in its impact districts

Oxfam Malawi has yesterday, at Sunbird Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, equipped Community Day Secondary school teachers with skills on how schools can be gender responsive as well as training them with a teacher’s code of conduct.

The half-day workshop was sponsored with funding from the European Union, and covered Community Day Secondary schools from the project’s impact districts; Mchinji, Dowa, Kasungu, Balaka, Phalombe and Lilongwe.

According to the Oxfam’s official page, the organisation is also working in partnership with Girls Empowerment Network (GENET) and Centre for Alternatives for Victimised Women and Children (CAVWOC) in the implementation of Improving Secondary School Education for Malawian girls (ISEM), a project which directs Safe Education projects, to make sure that it mitigates low enrolment and retention of girls in Community Day Secondary Schools in the country.

Present at the training, representing the selected CDSSs and the Division Office, were 95 education officials, in which 35 were females and 60 were males.

In her remarks at the event, Oxfam Deputy Country Director, Ms Lingalireni Mihowa, said teachers have a crucial role in promoting gender issues in their respective schools as one way of making sure that the girl child develops interest to remain in school.

After the training, one Head-teacher shared the following thoughts on ways in which schools in Malawi could be made more gender responsive:

“This can be achieved by making sure there is equality and balance in terms of choosing leaders in the schools – such as class monitors and prefects – as well as making sure that the sitting plan is also gender responsive, hence creating a safe learning environment for both girls and boys”.

Oxfam has since printed and distributed the teacher’s code of conduct which was produced by Teachers Union of Malawi.