ADVANCING EDUCATIONAL CHANGE AGENT LEADERSHIP IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY SETTING: THE MALAWI PROJECT AT NORTH CAROLINA A&T STATE UNIVERSITY

Beginning in 2007 faculty and students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University have traveled to Malawi every summer to conduct leadership and service learning research planned and executed in collaboration with change agent leaders on the ground. Our presentation details projects, outcomes, and collaborative knowledge production strategies employed to work with Malawians for sustainable change.

We aim to develop ethical and collaborative leadership, research, and global citizenship skills in students and faculty as they engage in participatory action research designed to maximize the efforts of Malawian change agents. Typically the knowledge flow in developing nations has been outside-in, as demonstrated in many non-governmental organization (NGO) efforts. Instead, we constantly interrogate our methods to avoid “colonizing” approaches. Of close study within all projects are the “communities of practice” that emerge as U.S.-based researchers join with Malawians to accomplish a set of tangible goals while sharing power.

Our support for educational innovation in three Primary Schools is situated within a socio-political context of turmoil: an HIV/AIDS epidemic, recurring famines and failure of the country to attain “food sovereignty” (the ability to provide food for people where and when it is needed, as opposed to purchasing food, fertilizers or pesticides from outside), an ongoing struggle for democratic government against a history of corruption, and recent implementation of a universal public education initiative.

Projects to the present involve:

1- Establishment/maintenance of libraries in three schools.
2- Co-execution of a feeding program at a village school, and December-January-February (starvation months) feeding at a second school.
3- Co-development of bi-lingual teaching with commercially-produced and teacher-authored Big Books (giant poster-sized books useful in classrooms of 125 or more children), and other English literacy acquisition projects.
4- Establishment of a “teacher emergency fund” at one school.
5- Establishment of scholarships for ten new pupils per year to attend secondary school.
6- Establishment of scholarships for three day students to complete Bachelor of Education degrees at Domasi College of Education in the critical needs areas of literacy, science and mathematics.
7- Establishment/maintenance of appropriate school first aid kits (splints, rehydration, snake bite kits).
8- Provision of medical supplies for Domasi Rural Hospital which sees 500+ patients per day and provides anti-retroviral medications.
9- Teacher development of culturally congruent HIV/AIDS instructional materials for Standards 1-8.
10- Co-maintenance of school facilities: blackboard-painting, painting curriculum charts on walls, repairs to holes in classroom floors and broken glass windows, provision of padlocks for doors.
11- Teacher development of a Literacy in the Mother Tongue initiative to be funded by Rotary International and executed in summers 2010 and 2011.
12- Efforts to move sustainable permaculture farming into written and enacted curriculum.
13- Co-investigation into possibilities for recreation therapy.
14- Co-investigation into community literacy efforts.
15- Establishment of career education curriculum.

Presenters include participating student and faculty researchers; perspectives shared include those of Malawian collaborators, as well.