Skills for Resilience (SRP) is a four-year project (2017-2021) designed to protect the livelihoods of young smallholder farmers in rural Malawi from climate change induced natural hazards. The project brings together some of the best national and international experts in the field of vocational training, social inclusion and climate-smart agriculture (CSA), including private sector, local government and local associations.

The agriculture sector in Malawi employs more than 80 percent of the country´s workforce, and it makes up 36 percent of Malawi’s GDP and 90 percent of its export earnings. In recent years, the sector has become increasingly threatened by climate change induced hazards.

Hazards in Malawi include violent floods, disease and pests, high temperatures, soil infertility and unpredictable extensive droughts. Smallholder farmers, who constitute the far majority of people involved with agriculture in Malawi, are particularly vulnerable in this context.

By educating young smallholder famers in climate smart agriculture, they will become more resilient toward the natural hazards. By being more resilient, they will see greater potential of making a living through farming. As the risk goes down and the produce increases more and more young farmers will become more desirous to develop their farms more efficiently and see the potential of creating cash through more knowledge and new techniques. In the end, natural disasters will have less negative impact to the Malawian society and young farmers will see a greater potential of making a decent living through farming and thereby reducing the unemployment rate for youth and increase the food security in the society as a whole.

SRP contributes to a higher degree of CSA competence and expertise in Malawi, through setting up a Certificate level program of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) at the LUANAR University under the Natural Resources College. The students will add crucial competence to the government and other institutions as operators by seeking employment within the agriculture sector. Additionally, SRP creates competence milieus in the districts through smallholder farmer trainings that are conducted by vocational training centers. Such training is expected to benefit the Malawian farmers’ resilience towards natural disasters in a long-term perspective.

SRP is an inclusive project that focus on the right of all members of a community to equally be included in the project. 10% of the targeted groups will be people living with disabilities and 60% will be women. The SRP is sponsored by The Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (DIKU), coordinated on an overall target level by The Norwegian Association of Disabled (NAD) in partnership with TEVETA who is implementing the project in cooperation with TEVET providing Institutions and other stakeholders to the mission of the project.

The project partners are developing a standardized and formalized Trainers Handbook on climate-smart agriculture in Malawi. The Trainers Handbook will have eight to ten modules that are designed to be taught individually in the short-term farmer trainings. A minimum of 5130 smallholder farmers will be trained under Skills for Resilience between 2018 and 2021. The project will also recruit and train ten to twelve trainers, which will operate from the Vocational Training Centers in rural Malawi.

Project Name:  Skills for Resilience Project (SRP)
Location Northern Region:  Giving Heart Farmers Training Institution (Nkhatabay District)
Kasama Community Technical College (Chitipa District).

Location Central Region: Tchesa Community Skills Development Center (Dedza District)
Mbandira Community Technical College (Nkhotakota District)

Location Southern Region: Kamuzu Vocational and Rehabilitation Center (Chiradzulu District)
DAPP Mikolongwe Vocational School (Chiradzulu District).

Skills for Resilience builds on existing structures and facilitates lasting cooperation between project stakeholders. All training sessions will be under the supervision of TEVETA in Malawi. TEVETA is a parastatal structure under the Ministry of Labour working in vocational education and certifying skills. A commercial partner to the project may contribute to the development of specific parts of the training curricula that is in line with their expertise, as well as selected training of trainers’ sessions to their expertise and possibly inputs, test demonstrations of their inputs during the training sessions. Additional project partners include the National Association of Smallholder Farmers in Malawi (NASFAM), the Malawi Council for the Handicapped (MACOHA) and the Federation of Disability Organizations in Malawi (FEDOMA).

The project is guided by an Expert Advisory Committee, which includes representatives from the project partners, research institutions and the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development. SRP also has a project coordinator that monitors that the planned activities are taking place and reports to EAC, TEVETA and NAD.

Social inclusion is at the core of SRP. This means that all training activities, information about the project and recruitment of candidates including smallholder farmers will be implemented in a way that is accessible to and inclusive of all smallholder farmers in Malawi – also women and persons with disabilities, who are traditionally largely excluded from education and employment in Malawi. A minimum of six vocational training facilities that will participate in the project will be rehabilitated to ensure improved accessibility for persons living with disability and all trainers will be trained in inclusive facilitation skills.

The project has also rehabilitated two TEVET providing institutions to make them more accessible to persons living with disabilities.