For most mothers in rural areas, talk of a girl child going out with men after reaching puberty is some source of happiness. Most of them see the men going out with their daughters as some auto-teller machines from where they can draw money through the daughters.

Teen pregnancy is one of the many reasons a majority of girls drop out of school in Malawi. Their story could be well-capped by the experience of 18–year old Ruth Nambazo, once a promising pupil at Mitole Primary School in Chikhwawa.

She was born in poverty. She grew up in poverty. And at the age 17, that's four years ago, she gave birth to twin children still in her poverty.

Since the start of the microfinance revolution about 30 years ago, poor people who live in many rural areas and urban slums still find it difficult to access appropriate microfinance products, even in countries with a well- developed sector.

A divorced mother is stranded with her five children in Dedza district because a school development project encroached upon a piece of land she has all along lived on.

There appears to be no alternative.

Hate it, scold it, abortion is a reality. However, dirty the name may sound, women continue to patronise hospitals to have unwanted pregnancies terminated.

No nation, however strong or weak, has been able to escape the influence of education in its drive to broaden human understanding, a trend that has seen education evolve into a key tool for keeping people in line with the changing world, breaking the limits placed by nature on human endeavours.

Twelve-year-old girl is acting in a play and a crowd of over two thousand people is listening dead silent. Occasionally, the crowd will break into uncontrollable laughter and hand clapping before returning to church silence.

It is a warm Saturday afternoon and we are in Traditional Authority Chulu's area in Kasungu district. Precisely, we are among a crowd of some three thousand people,mostly school children and parents, at Kantuwale Trading Centre.

Engulfed in beautiful green gardens and spacious villas and rooms along the shores of Lake Malawi in Mangochi, Makokola Retreat previously known as Club Makokola and affectionately called 'Club Mak' is a beehive of activities on one hot day in June.

SENIOR group village head Bondo of Wimbe (near Chamama) in Kasungu is a worried man. His subjects are not reaping from the soil as they used to years ago, and he blames wanton cutting of trees for this.

VERA Mlangazua Chirwa is a name that shall always be part of Malawi's history alongside that of her late husband, Orton Ching'oli Chirwa.

WHILE two-and-a half-year old Mary Msambi might have a wide-age gap with Emmie Mtanga, in her late thirties, one thing binds them into a common pair: they both live to testify how blood donated voluntarily saved their lives at Kamuzu Central Hospital.

UNTIL October last year, Edina Imedi – a 38 year-old mother of four, would in a day make three trips into the Chikala forest and wandered in there for hours to bring home 40 kilograms of firewood.

When 23-year-old Conipher Pipe began donating blood with Malawi Blood Transfusion Service (MBTS) in 2005 at Chipasula Secondary School in Lilongwe, little did he know that he had embarked on a journey that would see him being recognised for donating blood 28 times during the World Blood Donor Day (WBDD) to be held in Lilongwe at Silver Stadium this Saturday.

IT is generally accepted in the village setting that a relative who is out working, regardless of how far it is from home, is in the bush. And, it is expected that once that relative returns, they will use the ideas they gained from the 'bush' to advance needs of the society they left back.

The importance of reproductive health to development has been acknowledged at the highest level. The sick and malnourished cannot effectively contribute to national development. And yet, the youth who are the main players in reversing the vice, have for long been ignored. Our correspondent JUSTICE MPONDA writes on efforts to correct the situation:

Gogo Nachilenga has seen better days. Walking with a limp, owing to some good seventy plus years she has lived, she is definitely a bank of wisdom and experience. Of course with a good sense of humour too.

The United Nations declared May 22 as World Biodiversity Day (WBD). The term biodiversity is used to describe the huge variety of life on this planet. Estimates show that an astonishing 1.8 million different species have been identified and named by scientists.

He has great memory. Tell him a thing today and, years later, he will recount it to you in detail. This has proved a world of difference for him especially when hosting programmes on the former Television Malawi (TVM) in its inception years.

In poor African communities, education is one sector with too many limiting factors, from poverty and disease to lack of political will.