Tales of Malawi's Forgotten Children Malawi

Although it is home to over 14 million people, Malawi is not especially well-known on the world stage. This is largely due to the Southeastern African country’s ranking among the poorest developing nations in the world. The nation’s GDP per capita comes out to a mere 800 dollars a person, by 2008 estimates. Compare that to the 48,000 dollars average GDP per capita rate in the U.S. to begin to get a grasp of the depth of poverty in Malawi.

Almost 20 percent of the country’s population is infected with HIV/AIDS. In addition to the AIDS epidemic, conditions are so poor in Malawi that the life expectancy is a startlingly low 43 years. By contrast, Americans can expect to live well into their 70s.

In Malawi, there are hundreds of thousands of orphans, more than 50 percent of which are orphaned when they lose their parents to AIDS. Because these children are left on their own, without parents to care for them and feed them, many resort to theft and other crimes to feed themselves. For breaking the law, children end up incarcerated in Malawi’s juvenile prison system, when they were often just desperate for food and resources for survival. Once imprisoned, children continue to face an equally dire situation. Prisons lack sufficient food, medicine and clothing to adequately care for the children.

Although Malawi has been facing this grave humanitarian crisis for years, the situation there hasn’t garnered much if any attention in Western media. Armed conflicts are more likely to grab headlines, like those taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. While those situations certainly require urgent attention, we can’t let the more silent emergencies slip by. Malawi’s orphan children, who are bearing the worst of the nation’s poverty and disease rates, remain voiceless and unnoticed in slums and prisons throughout the country.

Enter Mia Kirshner. You might know her from TV’s The L Word or the film The Black Dahlia. As it turns out, she’s also a Causecast leader, an amazing author and a brave humanitarian. In her 2008 book, I Live Here, Kirshner, alongside author J.B. MacKinnon, recorded the stories of young boys at a Malawian prison in the nation’s capital. Her experiences in Malawi are one part of Kirshner’s ongoing travels, gathering stories and art from the world’s most underrepresented people. By giving voice to the powerless, Kirshner’s I Live Here Foundation looks to artistic expression as a necessary complement to humanitarian aid in developing nations around the world.

Since we love what they’re doing (and never turn down the chance to party), Causecast is hosting a cocktail party fundraiser to benefit I Live Here on August 22, featuring a DJ set from KCRW and a silent auction. Check out the flyer for the event here.

To read personal stories from the boys in the Kachere juvenile prison, pick up a copy of I Live Here. To support the brave work of Kirshner and her colleagues, you can contribute to the I Live Here Foundation directly on Causecast. Also, check out their partner, Operation USA for additional information on the Malawi project.