REGISTERED 7 JUNE 2006 · JUMBE CHIEFDOM, EASTERN PROVINCE

Rural women farmers of the Luangwa Valley, organised.

Mambwe District Women Development Association is a women-led association of small and medium-scale farmers. We were founded by our own members, we are governed by our own members, and every kwacha we earn goes back into the ten area associations that make up this district.

See what we do Work with us

Who we are

An association built by the women it serves.

Mambwe DWDA was registered with the Registrar of Societies on 7 June 2006 as a women-led organisation. Our members are small and medium-scale rural farmers, drawn from ninety-four women's groups across ten area associations. The great majority are women; a hundred and five men farm alongside them as full members.

We exist for a plain reason: to reduce poverty among rural women in Mambwe District and to lift the standard of living of the households they hold together. In practice that means seed in the ground, literacy in the classroom, rights understood, and income that does not depend on anyone's goodwill but our own.

We are headquartered at Mambwe Boma in Jumbe Chiefdom, in the Luangwa Valley of Eastern Province, Zambia. Our nearest town is Chipata.

Legal status: Registered women-led association
Registered: 7 June 2006
Registration number: ORS/02/95/12
Headquarters: Mambwe Boma, Jumbe Chiefdom
District: Mambwe, Eastern Province
Nearest town: Chipata

Our work

Five programmes, one purpose.

Each programme answers something our members told us stood between them and a better season. They are run by members, for members, in the villages where they live.

Farming

Farming is what our members do, and it is the heart of the association. Households grow maize, groundnuts, sunflower, soya beans, beans and cotton — for the pot first, and for the market after.

We promote sustainable methods suited to valley soils and an unreliable rainy season. Conservation farming through pot-holing and ripping, with animal manure worked back into the land, keeps moisture where the roots are and rebuilds soil our members will still be farming in twenty years.

Maize
Groundnuts
Sunflower
Soya beans
Beans
Cotton

Legal education

Members are trained in human rights, civic rights and gender, then go home and sensitise their own communities. The subjects that matter most here are the hardest ones: gender-based violence, early pregnancy and child marriage. Rural women and girls carry the cost of these, and a community that understands the law is a community that pushes back.

Adult literacy

Working with Community Development officers, we trained instructors from within our own membership. They now teach other members to read and write. A woman who can read her own contract, her own receipt and her own clinic card negotiates from a different position entirely.

Climate change

The valley is getting hotter and the rains less dependable. We help members adapt what they plant and how they plant it, so that a bad season means a smaller harvest rather than an empty granary.

Guest house

Six rooms at Mambwe Boma, run by the association and let to visitors, officials and travellers through the valley. It is a service to the district and it is also our most reliable source of independent income.

Revolving fund

Small business capital is placed with groups and repaid back into the fund, so the same money works for one member after another. Alongside it we run training in business management skills, so the capital meets a plan rather than a hope.

Where we work

Ten areas across Mambwe District.

Each area association elects its own contact person and holds its own groups together. This is who to call, and where.

Area associations, groups, members and contacts
Area association	Groups	Members	Contact person	Telephone
Jumbe	12	172	Mary Banda	0976 305 642
Chipapa	10	129	Mary Njobvu	0976 735 927
Chikowa	10	231	Juliana Banda	0770 747 138
Lupande	15	347	Elizabeth Zulu	—
Chitenga	41	377	Silicky Chindambo	0973 496 194
Mwangazi	22	666	Bwalya Sakala	0974 824 900
Mdima	27	510	Jaseline Mwanza	0979 519 408
Kasamanda	18	290	Martha Chibanga	0972 386 096
Kakumbi	16	343	Margret Moyo	0974 210 149
Mphomwa	20	305	Nsofwa Nkhazi	0771 158 09

The next three years

To reduce poverty and vulnerability among rural women, youth and children — and to put improved livelihoods within reach of every member.

That goal is not a slogan. It breaks down into work we can be held to, in the villages where our members already live and farm.

Food security, so that a household eats through the lean months as well as the harvest.
Higher literacy levels among adult women across all ten areas.
Legal education that reaches communities, not only the members we train.
Continued work against HIV and AIDS, alongside the district's health services.
Empowerment programmes that leave members with assets and skills they keep.

How we fund the work

We earn our own income.

Grants come and go. These three streams are ours, they run whether or not a donor is in the room, and they are what keeps the programmes open.

The guest house

Six rooms let to visitors at Mambwe Boma. The largest and steadiest earner, and the one that carries our running costs.

Poultry production

Birds raised and sold by the association, turning feed and labour into working capital across the year.

Membership subscriptions

Paid by members themselves. Small sums, but they are the reason this association answers to the women who built it.

Stay with us

Six rooms at Mambwe Boma.

If you are travelling through the Luangwa Valley for work, for research or on your way to the park, you can stay in a guest house owned and run by the women of this district.

Your room pays for a literacy class, a sensitisation meeting, a loan into the revolving fund. It is the most direct way an outsider can back this association — you get a bed, and the work continues.

Enquire about a room on WhatsApp

Contact

Talk to the association directly.

Whether you are a member, a partner organisation, a funder or a traveller looking for a room — the same office answers.

WhatsApp us on +260 975 640 554
mambwedwda@yahoo.com
+260 976 993 933

Morreen Zulu

Executive Secretary & primary contact

WhatsApp: +260 975 640 554
Telephone: +260 976 993 933
Alternative: +260 970 123 457
Email: mambwedwda@yahoo.com
Postal address: P.O. Box 23, Jumbe Chiefdom,
Mambwe District, Eastern Province, Zambia