malawi Archives - Jake Lyell

Post Tagged with: "malawi"

Connecting the Dots

October 26, 2014

My latest video for Catholic Relief Services is the third of a trilogy showcasing the IMPACT program in Malawi. This piece, an excerpt from which is shown below, deals with community-based child protection programs. In Malawi, one out of three children has experienced abuse before they reach the age of 18. Malawi, in and of itself, is no more dangerous for children than other countries in the area. The problem has been that those working to protect children, from the next door neighbor in the rural village to the Malawi Social Welfare Department, have not been working in coordination with one another. Children have suffered as a result. In some instances cases of abuse have gone unreported, and perpetrators have gone unpunished. IMPACT has successfully connected the various stakeholders through the deployment of family care volunteers and the mobilization of an Orphans and Vulnerable Children Committee in each community where[…]

From Burden to Blessing

July 24, 2014

The dawn of the new millennium cast a dark pall over the Southern African nation of Malawi. The county faced a food crisis that was, in part, fueled by the loss of agricultural workforce due to AIDS-related deaths. The national HIV prevalence rate was at 16%, and as high as 30% among pregnant women. With the coming of anti-retroviral medication (ARVs) in 2003, NGOs and systems of government rushed to educate HIV positive people, who had by now organized into peer support groups within their communities. Essential steps taken by these groups to living positively with the disease included good nutrition, practicing abstinence and safe sex, proper ARV adherence, as well as learning how to give home-based care to bed-ridden HIV positive peers in the community. Ten years later, support group members are not only some of the healthiest-looking people in their communities, they’re also talking to their negative or[…]

Leave it to the Experts: Innovative HIV Programs in Malawi

June 30, 2014

We’ve reached a global hinge point in the treatment of HIV. People living with the disease are no longer passive beneficiaries. After more than a decade of receiving health and nutrition training, HIV+ people are often times living healthier lifestyles than many of their negative peers. Catholic Relief Services‘ Expert Client program places trained HIV+ community members in local health facilities where they guide new patients through the rigors of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV). By using their own experience of living with the disease to counsel and mentor, they empower the new patients to live more healthy and productive lives. I recently shot and produced this video for CRS in southern Malawi. The program is funded by USAID.

Catching Up | Summer, 2014

June 4, 2014

See what’s been happening lately in my work and life. Special thanks to Andrew Ladson from MCC for the photos of me from Namibia, and to Lauren Matthews for the wedding video.

Shoreculture II: Lake Malawi

December 14, 2009

More like an ocean, Lake Malawi runs almost the entire length of this Southern African country. I went to one of the least developed parts, the northern town of Karonga, on my way down to a recent assignment shooting Gucci funded UNICEF projects for Marie Claire Magazine.