The Malawian people, they enjoy life. And although there is hardship they face in the villages, they have a lot of zest for life and a lot of endurance. They are very resilient. The children are so beautiful. They are joyful. They have beautiful smiles. They are just wonderful to work for.

Warm greetings, thoughtful viewers, and welcome to this week’s edition of Good People, Good Works. Today we travel to the southeast African nation of Malawi to learn about some of the life transforming changes occurring in communities thanks to an initiative that is creating new opportunities and hope for the disadvantaged.

Rita Nelesoni is a single mother with five children and is physically challenged. She’s among some of the thousands of female headed households that benefit from the Social Cash Transfer program in her area.

My life now has greatly improved for the better. The best part is that my children are now living happily. I can provide for food and clothes for the whole month. The children are also going to school without problems and they are also working hard. The children are no longer malnourished as food is now enough for the whole family.

The program was initiated in 2006 by the Malawian government with the technical support of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and financing from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

My name is Mayke Huijbregts, I’m from Holland. I have been in Malawi for almost five years now. And I came to the country to develop an action plan to scale up response to orphans and vulnerable children. And then from there, we mobilized funding from the Global Fund into the country, up to US$19 million.

The cash assistance is provided on a monthly basis and is uplifting thousands of Malawian households by enabling them to obtain basic necessities.

Since April 2006, we designed and tested this instrument of Social Cash Transfers, and in the meantime now, this scheme is run in seven districts, reaching 25,000 households, and 100,000 people, and 50,000 children. And we have evaluated it, and learned through that evaluation that the cash impacted well on the health status of the household members, especially the children.

That 80% more were seeking healthcare, but also that 80% of the household members reported to really feel well and healthy. But also, we saw a very big improvement in nutrition status of the children, especially (the prevalence of) wasting and underweight had really dropped drastically in a period of one year, and chronic malnutrition also was stifled.

So, we have really seen that the cash has contributed to food security and food diversity. Also we have seen that households invest in assets for agriculture. So, they are using the funds to improve their housing, their hygiene and their clothing.

So, there are children in the beneficiary households, they are now going to school. They went up from one meal a day to three meals a day. And the enrollment rate in the households has improved from 85% to 96%. But not only that, the retention rate in the households has been very good.

So, we have supported the government to build multiple partnerships, in order to design, test, implement and evaluate the program. And now we are hoping to raise more awareness and leverage further resources so that the scheme can be consolidated, sustained, but in the end, also rolled out to the 10% of the ultra poor households and the labor constrained in Malawi.

The Social Cash Transfer program is part of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s overall commitment to improving the lives of the next generation of Africans.

UNICEF in Africa is very much involved in health services. So that is early childhood immunization, to make sure that children are immunized from the age of five and that they get vitamin A supplementation, and that they are protected from malaria by sleeping with bed nets. Also our role is to strengthen the health services. So that quality services are being provided in the hospitals and the health centers. And then our role is to treat children for malnutrition through therapeutic and supplementary feeding.

And our role is to strengthen the quality of education and to also support access to further enrollment, life skills education, girls’ education, and child friendly schools. And then we are striving to advocate for higher teacher/pupil ratio, and improvement of the classrooms, and also build new classrooms.

And then, we are involved in early childhood care and development. So the organization is establishing community based childcare centers, where children under five come for a meal, and for play and early stimulation and motivation.

As part of its mission, UNICEF also focuses on providing compassionate treatment and care to children with HIV/AIDS as well as on halting the spread of the virus through health-awareness programs.

We are involved in HIV/AIDS programming, which is HIV prevention by working with the youth to inform them how to protect themselves as well as to provide access to voluntary testing and counseling services, and prevent from mother to child transmission. But also UNICEF has helped with the procurement of drugs into the country, like ARVs (antiretrovirals) and the access to treatment has been rolled out now countrywide, so to all the health centers, so people with HIV can access these.

When we return, we’ll continue our discussion of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s benevolent work in Malawi. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

The most beautiful thing about the Malawian people, is that they care for each other in the community.

Welcome back to Good People, Good Works on Supreme Master Television. We are focusing on the Social Cash Transfer program initiated by the Malawian government with the technical support of the United Nations Children’s Fund and financing from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The project is transforming the lives of Malawians in need for the better.

Cash transfers is an important instrument of social protection. It has a great child protection element which I think is the core foundation of any program. And from there you link it to access to education, access to health, access to proper nutrition and complement it with protection from abuse and exploitation.

So child poverty reduction needs to be taken extremely seriously because otherwise children grow up deprived of the material, social and spiritual needs which they need to survive, grow and develop into a healthy human being in this world.

Beneficiaries of the Social Cash Transfer program include those who are HIV positive, the elderly, orphans, children and households headed by females, the elderly, the chronically ill, and children.

There was one child headed household, headed by Regina and she has four sisters to take care of. And we found her at the age of 14, all by herself with her sisters. And they were not at school. They were not fed well and now she’s really thrived because now they have the school uniforms, they have dresses for church. They have a nice house. They have three meals a day. All the girls are in school. They got the bicycles. So you can imagine that after two, three years of investment, this household has really thrived.

Before we started receiving this money, we had many problems. We didn’t have adequate food and clothes, our school attendance were also very erratic because we did not have the resources, things like notebooks and clean clothes. With this scheme, we have experienced a great change. We now have uniforms. We have food. We are also able to go to school every day. We are much better now.

The program also enables the elderly to care for their grandchildren who have been orphaned, often because their parents have passed away from illness. Such a household is called a “labor-constrained” household, which means no adult is able to work to support the family.

You see a grandmother taking care of many orphan children. But she can no longer work. She’s 80 years old; traumatized because of the loss of her own children and then having to take care of the orphan children without any means. So the fact that we can empower the grandmother to take care of these children, she feels more dignity and she’s more happy. So there is a little bit of love returning in those households after a tough process of mourning and grief and that is very beautiful to see.

So the beauty of the program is that cash has multiple outcomes unlike food aid or giving out clothes because the households themselves know very well how to invest it and to use it, which they use in the best interest of the children in those households.

Education is crucial to every society’s progress and advancement. The funds that the households receive have been making a large difference in academic performance.

But because the children feel so proud that their grandmother or themselves are taking care of themselves now, their performance in class has also improved, because they have food in their bellies, and they feel taken care of, so they can concentrate much better.

My wish is that every child can grow up and access quality education. And that they can access secondary education so that they can in the future positively contribute to the economic development of the country. So what my hope would be is that a program like this will be sustained and rolled out in order to make sure that one million children in those households, get an opportunity to go to school and have proper nutrition, but also feel cared for by their state.

And my wish for Malawi’s future is to continue with their economic growth and prosperity and to make sure it is socially included growth. So that everyone has the equal right to grow and develop into a healthy human being, equal to other children.

Today, with the Social Cash Transfer program in place, many of the beneficiaries are looking forward to a brighter and more secure future for their families.

If the social cash transfer scheme continues, I wish I could start my own business to supplement the family income and that my children can have a better life. I also dream of being independent.

Our heartfelt thanks goes to the Malawian government, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the United Nations Children’s Fund for significantly enhancing the welfare of many Malawians through the Social Cash Transfer program. We would also like to express our gratitude to Mayke Huijbregts for providing her perspective on the program’s implementation in the country. May this wonderful project continue to expand and soon reach all those in need in this beautiful African nation.

For more details on UNICEF Malawi, please visit www.unicef.org/infobycountry/malawi.html

Thank you, affectionate viewers, for joining us on this edition of Good People, Good Works. Up next is The World Around Us after Noteworthy News. May your days be filled with the love and laughter.

Thus far in 2010, there have been six earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater, with millions of lives having been seriously affected as a result.

Some of the largest earthquakes occur around the borders of the great tectonic plates that characterize our planet. And we just recently had two of those earthquakes on plate boundaries, the earthquake in Haiti and also the earthquake in Chili.

How should we respond during an earthquake?

There are good ways to respond and there are not so good ways to respond. I think the most important thing that people can understand about earthquakes is don’t run.

Be sure to watch Part 1 of “Earthquake Survival with Dr. Jim Goltz,” Wednesday, April 28 on Planet Earth: Our Loving Home.