Malawi

Relief Work

SimplyHelp has been an active player in the disaster and food crisis relief efforts in Malawi. SimplyHelp volunteers collected and distributed a full container of donations and supplies in the poorest areas in Malawi.

History
Despite concerted efforts over the past eight years, the latest government assessment has revealed that little has changed for the better in the country, and that Malawians are still just as poor as ever. More than half the country’s population continues to live on around 32-cents a day, and just over a fifth of Malawians live on only 20-cents a day.

More than half of Malawi’s population, 6.4 million people, live below the poverty line, while 2.7 million, or about one-fifth (22%), experience extreme poverty. They cannot afford to meet the minimum daily food requirements.

A key factor in Malawi’s persistent poverty is its very young and rapidly expanding population. Sixty percent of Malawi’s 12.3 million people are aged under 20 (according to a 2005 estimate), and more than half of the poor population in Malawi are children. Popstar Madonna famously adopted a Malawian child, kickstarting an African adoption trend among the Hollywood elite in the early 2000s.

On January 30, 2008, rising floodwaters devastated crops, livestock and infrastructure across half of the country and affected a total of 12,199 households, or about 73,000 people.