Miss Malawi makes appeal for food aid

Miss Malawi, Joyce Mphande, had three words for the business executives from Busan and South Gyeongsang assembled for a meeting: “Please help us.”

The meeting, at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Haeundae, Busan, on July 21, was organized to help Mphande raise funds for the Corrections Department of Malawi and was part of a 15-day goodwill tour she began on July 14.

There, Mphande talked about the conditions that had brought her to Korea. She said that because her government cannot afford to feed prison inmates, it has begun mobilizing prisoners to help alleviate the problem. Inmates plow fields and plant crops near the institution.

To feed all 11,000 prisoners at the facility, 40,000 50-kilogram (110-pound) sacks of corn powder are required every year. This year, the goal is to produce 80,000 sacks of corn powder. Mphande explained that half of the yield will be used to feed the inmates while the remainder will be given to the needy.

Kim Young-jin, the director of the African division within the Crops of Love Ministries, a Korean religious organization working with the Malawi Prison Service to alleviate the plight of inmates in the country, is in charge of a program that raises funds for Malawian prisons.

Kim, 53, earned his doctoral degree in criminology at Sam Houston State University in Texas and taught at Pennsylvania State University before starting work at Handong Global University in Pohang, North Gyeongsang. Later, he studied theology and began helping African prisoners under a program initiated by Prison Fellowship International, a religious nongovernmental organization based in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to provide aid to needy prisoners. It was Kim who urged Mphande to come to Korea.

Mphande says that through this trip, she hopes to “contribute overcoming poverty in my homeland.”

She participated in a fund raiser called Love for Africa at the Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel on July 20. More than 300 distinguished guests, including Grand National Party lawmakers Park Jin and Choung Byoung-gug, and Reverend Ohm Shin-hyung of the Christian Council of Korea attended the event. Approximately 100 million won was raised, which Mphande said is equivalent to the Correctional Department’s annual budget.

Malawi is located in southeastern part of Africa. The average per capita income for the population of 14.2 million is between $200 and $300.