International Women's Day in Nkhotakota

Part of my job is to work with girls and womens empowerment. I work closely with Nkhotakota Young Women Can Do It Club, and this year we decided to celebrate International Women's Day for the very first time. Along with adressing important topics concerning girls and women and emphasising our rights, there was a lot of entertainment including live music, plays, poetry, an exhibition and a movie. It is fair to say the day was a success!

I want to share with you parts of the report written from the day by Pauline Makina, Chair of Nkhotakota Young Women Can Do It.


Nkhotakota Young Women Can Do It (YWCDI) on 8th March organized a celebration of the International Women’s Day with the theme “EQUALITY FOR WOMEN IS PROGRESS FOR ALL” at Nkhotakota Cultural Centre.

We invited Bishop Mtekateka Private Secondary School, Don Bosco High School, Linga Community Day Secondary and the communities from different part of Nkhotakota district.

The celebration aimed at sharing ideas on how we, the young women, can be empowered to excel in our life to achieve our goals and also to share some challenges that we young people face in each and everyday life and to the way we can deal with these challenges.  We also discussed empowering young women from different communities for personal and social transformation by inspiring girls to have the voice, problem solving capacity, to speak up, be decision makers, create visionary change and realize their full potential within their communities.

To achieve our aim on this function, we invited The Officer in charge of Nkhotakota Police Station, who encouraged young women to report to police every time and mistreat (harm) they face from their communities.

The Matron of ST Anne’s Hospital, who acted as a role model to young women of Nkhotakota district and also encouraged them to work extra hard in their studies to achieve their goals.

The caretaker for Nkhotakota Victim Support Unit (Nkhotakota Police station) expressed concern that young women are facing a lot of challenges for example, sexual harassment, girls are forced into early marriages but they don’t report this issues to police. Since we invited students to attend this function, we also invited teachers from Secondary Schools, who also encouraged girls to have their voice and making sound decisions to achieve what they planned and want to achieve.

Happy Women's Day !