Malawi's wow factor

Madonna's adoption of an orphan from Malawi has put that Southern African country in the world's headlines. But the HIV/AIDS crisis there has created a million orphans, and Malawi has not got the resources to care for them.

On BBC 1's Newsline tonight Noel Thompson shows how Northern Ireland's independent development agency, War on Want NI, is spending money raised here to help people living and dying with HIV/Aids

Kathonie is barely 20 years old, and her life has been torn apart by the HIV/Aids epidemic which is rampaging through Malawi.

"We were six children, but my mother died from Aids, and then my father, " she says. "We were sent to stay with my stepfather and his wife, but they both died from Aids too, so we had no one to look after us. My brothers and sisters have been split up, and that's how I ended up in this orphanage."

Malawi is fighting a losing battle against HIV/Aids. Recent estimates say there are one and a half million people infected, and already a million children left without their parents. The disease has reduced life expectancy in Malawi by a decade in the last five years.

The infection is played out against a background of serious economic problems - average income is just £80 a year and there is little money available to fight the disease, or to care for the children left behind. HIV/Aids, says Maxwell Mphwina, WOWNI's Malawi operations manager, is devastating a generation. Children are being left to grandparents who have no resources themselves, and find themselves in desperate conditions.

War on Want NI is spending most of its limited development budget for Malawi on fighting the effects of HIV/Aids.

In the village of Mkundi, close to the shores of the lake which comprises half of Malawi's territory, Kathonie is one of about 50 children and young people at the orphan centre built with support from WOWNI. The children don't live here, but they come every day for substantial meals.

New buildings provide the shelter where the children can eat, play and learn skills like tailoring and carpentry, which will allow them to make a living as they get older.

None of this, says the founder of Mkundi Orphan Care, Lizzie Banda, would have been possible without War on Want NI.

"I started off in an open shack with no facilitie," she explains. " Now we have these buildings with sewing machines and wood-working tools, we can train the children, and also sell some of the things they make to raise money to make us self-sufficient and provide care for more children. The lives of these children are on the up!"

War on Want doesn't hand out money to anyone who asks for it. It works with 15 carefully chosen partners in Malawi, on Aids-related projects which it nurtures through training, education and financial support until they can stand on their own feet. Around half of WOWNI's one million pound income is earned through its chain of shops around Northern Ireland. It receives a quarter of a million from Irish Aid, the development arm of the Irish Foreign Affairs Ministry, the rest comes from donations. The director, Linda McClelland, rejects the suggestion that its budget is so small as to be negligible.

"Not at all. We are a small agency but there is a real niche for people like us. We work closely on the ground with people who would be too small for bigger agencies like Oxfam or Concern. We train them, build their ability and their confidence, and they in turn reach out to help other people."

That's what happened to Irene Mhango, in the town of Livingstonia, high on Malawi's northern plateau. She is HIV positive and is a member of theWOWNI-funded outreach group which takes the HIV/Aids message to a still fearful community. We went with her to the Mchenga coal mine, where the cycle of infection is remorseless. People die from HIV/Aids, poverty forces their women into prostitution with the transient population of miners and truckers, and the disease spreads further. In an effort to break that cycle WOWNI helps fund the Livingstonia area primary health care programme which teaches people about the dangers of infection and how to avoid it. Irene has been on effective anti-retroviral drugs for some years now. Her message to the several hundred people gathered for an Aids awareness session is that diagnosis does not mean your life is over. Indeed the quicker you're tested, the greater the chances of surviving the infection. Leading by example, Irene persuaded WOWNI to fund her with a few hundred pounds to start a shop with a number of other HIV/Aids sufferers. Now the Tiwengo grocery store is a going concern, its sign proudly proclaiming "Proprietors, PLWAs, People Living With Aids."

Irene's enterprise is changing attitudes to HIV/Aids, reducing the stigma and discrimination and making it easier for people to talk about the disease which has touched every town and village in the country.

HIV/Aids poses a huge challenge to Malawi. The government cannot fight it without help from other countries. In a small scale but effective fashion, War on Want Northern Ireland is making its contribution to halting the disease which is changing the face of Africa.

The first of Noel Thompson's two reports from Malawi is on Newsline tonight on BBC 1 Northern Ireland at 6.30pm. The second will be shown later this week