Innovate to amplify Civic Action

Generally Malawi's civic action among primary and secondary school students, on the one hand, is the result of a lack of civic engagement and involvement among students, which confines their capacity to engage effectively in their communities and contribute to Malawi's development process.The lack of formal education and engagement can be attributed to a number of factors, including limited funds for schools and teachers, insufficiently trained teachers on civic education, and, as is the case, a complete absence of increasing focus on civic education inside the national curriculum. As a result, many students lack the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to participate actively in civic life and make positive contributions to their communities. This has implications for the long-term development repercussions of Malawi's civic sector. This comes from the fact that an engaged and informed citizenry is essential for building a thriving and sustainable society.

On the other hand, there is a lack of active participation and engagement by these students in civic activities that can promote good citizenship and improve the development of their communities. Despite the fact that some elements of civic education are included in the Malawian curriculum, most students have limited knowledge of, interest in, and involvement in civic issues and activities.This lack of interest and participation in civic activities among primary and secondary school students can be attributed to a number of factors, including insufficient resources and support for civic education programs, limited opportunities for civic engagement, and a lack of incentives for active participation in civic activities. This concern poses a significant challenge to Malawi's community development and promotion of good citizenship among its youth. 

Innovate to amplify Civic Action, is a solution that we are providing and consists of the development of source books that will be used in primary and secondary schools. These source books will be shared in various primary and secondary schools, and teacher's colleges (primary and secondary schools) for learners' and teachers' use. For teachers, it will be a teacher resource guide. 

The solution will also include the formation of 'civic action clubs' in primary and secondary schools to ignite the practicality of the content in the source books. These clubs will have mentors and patrons to make sure they are sustainable and facilitate discussions where necessary.

To ensure a wide reach for the solution, the content will be disseminated through interactive drama. So the school clubs will also have a chance to listen to the radio drama and give their live feedback to the program. 

The solution would also provide an opportunity for these clubs to gather at a civic action annual conference where members would have a chance to interact and network. The conferences will be three, each with a different target audience; primary school learners, secondary school learners, and teachers' college learners.

For secondary and teacher colleges, the solution will include an application that will create a platform where civic leaders will engage and share the content from the source books, bring in topics that are of interest within the civic action, and provide updates of the actions taken in their communities. This will also foster collaborative efforts for actions that need a national response. This app will be available on the Play Store and will use android software as most Malawians uses Android phones.

In summary, the solution deliverables include source books, primary and secondary school clubs, annual conferences, interactive radio drama, and an Android app. These solutions, are among other things key solutions that are posed with the civic action.

The project targets school-going pupils and teachers from teacher-training colleges as the primary beneficiaries. Other youths in the country would be our secondary beneficiaries. 

These are key people in terms of the development of the nation. Over 52% of Malawians are young people, who are critical to driving civic action. Since the population has the potential to lead in various cycles of the society, it is essential to engage them at a very tender age so that the future of civic action would be certain. 

Currently, these people do not have adequate knowledge, platforms, or incentives for civic action, hence their low participation despite Malawi being a democratic country. 

The solution empowers the targeted beneficiary with tools, skills, platforms to express and practice civic actions. They are exposed to the opportunities that empower them as citizens.

The beneficiaries have access to a network of fellow civic leaders through an Android app platform that will be developed. This will aid in peer learning and keeping up-to-date on developments within the civic sector.

Our team is passionate about serving humanity. Having been one of the citizens privileged to attain civic action education, I feel sad to see that the new curriculum does not have a specific focus on civic education. We are coming with different skill sets that are necessary for this challenge. 

The team is working in collaboration with government curriculum development experts who will be key in the development of source books. The director, who is also a project lead, has been at the forefront, writing for the radio and contributing to the secondary literature.

Working with learners in various schools for over 8 years has given us an in-depth understanding of the learners. Our team has been working with young people aged 5 to 24 for over ten years.

We are applying to SOLVE for an increased impact through partnership with SOLVE and its connections. We believe that through partnership, we can achieve a lot together. 

We want support in terms of resources and expertise. Much as we have creative and innovative ideas as a solution to this challenge, we still need guidance from the pool of SOLVE network members so that we execute this assignment with excellence.

We want to have a different crop of generation that will look at social and environmental issues with a responsible action. We are hoping that we will empower the learner so that they are able to take civic action. 

We would love to leverage this partnership opportunity, to be part of the solution in our community by applying global strategies that are gained through global support from the Solve Community. We want to help our community demand its civic rights at the grass-roots level. 

Our solution is quite interesting and has the potential to influence both primary and secondary schools. Since we are partnering with the government, once the source books have been developed, the government would also help in distribution through inclusive quality education for all, complementing our effort.

The solution has five components that are interesting to young people, so we anticipate active participation from the targeted audience. Unlike other solutions where facilitators would talk about an issue, our solution provides platforms to practice the same through the clubs. These are interactive clubs where a lot of activities would be done, including music, drama, poetry, watching movies, and whatever available resources are in the area, just to keep the clubs interesting. 

Our solution not only targets primary beneficiaries but also other secondary beneficiaries because of the model of dissemination that we employ, interactive radio drama. People love stories, and when we disseminate important information through the means of story telling, more people will be interested in listening to the information.

The world has become digital, and people are connected globally through the internet. Our solution has also considered social media platform as a means of enhancing its impact. Once people are introduced to the solution, they will be encouraged to download the app from the Play Store and sign up so that they can continue to share ideas, give updates, and do anything related to the civic action.

We are confident that the solution would catalyze broader positive impact as it has employed innovation that are so relevant to the generation we are dealing with.

In the next year, we would like to see a source book completed and approved for use in all three targeted impact areas: primary schools, secondary schools, and teacher colleges. This would be done by continuing to engage the Ministry of Education and working with them throughout the whole process so that no one is left behind.

We would want to see more civic action taken responsibly by beneficiaries in various quarters of society.  Since there are clubs, as a means of practicing and sharing ideas, we anticipate more civic action collaborations among learners and other beneficiaries. Learners would be encouraged to share these with their community members. They would also be encouraged to start their own clubs in their communities, so that the ripple effect would be great. 

The mobile app interactions would remain relevant as a source of news to media practitioners, we will be able to get updates on various actions that may even be skipped by the media. 

In five years, we envision seeing civic action given a space in the curriculum. Malawi is reviewing its curriculum for the 2023–2024 financial year, which begins in April. We would want to participate in the consultations and submit our papers on the proposal to consider civic action subject. 

We anticipate also seeing communities take civic action on social and environmental issues. We want to hear more about communities making bylaws that aim at reducing social ills and environmental mistreatment. 

We would want to see the government take into consideration the resolutions that would be made at the annual conference. The events will be heavily publicized and streamed online to ensure that the majority of people attend and follow through.

The progress will be measured by the number of people taking civic action in various communities. How many are taking part in civic action once they are engaged through the source book, radio interactive drama, annual conference, mobile app, and school clubs.

The progress would be measured when we have a mobile app up and running. We would want to see that the app is useful to people by looking at the number of people sign up.

Furthermore, we will measure progress by looking at the number of active clubs that have been formed. We would prefer to see that these clubs are successful rather than just seeing them as school clubs.

The commencement of the annual conference would be our indicator of progress for this project. We would want to see that there is huge collaboration among the players who will be willing to join a network of like-minded civic leaders.

The number of responses received through the radio interactive drama would be another indicator of the progress of the solution. 

We believe that seeing that would signal to us how we are doing and inform us where we need to change or improve. It will be of great use to see where we need to put our most energy and where we need to shift attention.

We will see an increase in participation in the civic action activities by learners and community members. Since they both have access to the content of the source book through clubs and radio drama respectively.

Increased accountability of the government and other stakeholders for service delivery. Since the citizens will be well informed of what ought to be done in case where they are not happy with service delivery, they are more likely to get better social, health services among other things.

Responsible citizens who take care of their environment by engaging authorities to improve on commitments on the same. 

Our solution is a combination of five elements, including: mobile app, a source book, interactive radio drama, and an annual conference. 

A source book informs other solutions as it is information that is compiled by experts who have scientifically proven data and information. Then this information must be disseminated through various means including mobile app, annual conference, school clubs and interactive radio drama.

Our team does not discriminate against any person in terms of race, ethnicity, or gender, among other things. We are an inclusive organization that promotes gender. We advocates and implement the 60/40 in our key roles.

Our primary beneficiaries are primary and secondary school learners. Our goal is to make sure that they access quality education. So, we partner with communities to ensure that we are able to identify their needs. As an organization, we commit to finding solutions to their needs. Our solutions are mostly informed by the need for a particular community.

Our financial plan for becoming sustainable will be through donations and grants. We are learning how to put systems in place, and position ourselves through capacity building on proposal writing so that we have constant funding for our projects and operations.

So far, we have managed to secure funding from World Connect, where we were given finances to build the teachers' house and the under-5 clinic (under way). So, we have made sure that we use the finances for the intended purposes so that we develop a reputation and get constant funding from donors.