Firelight Foundation’s partner organizations – GASO, Tikondwe, Ufuluwathu, Nancholi, and Kadyalunda – have been transforming lives, protecting children, and empowering families of at-risk girls and child marriage survivors in ways that are sustainable, measurable, and inspiring.  

Their work demonstrates that child protection is most effective when solutions are community-driven, culturally sensitive, and include youth and families.

GASO CBO: Protecting Children and Strengthening Communities

In the area of Group Village Headman Chikololere in Senior Chief Kachindamoto, Dedza District, the community-based organization GASO has worked closely with religious and traditional leaders to address the harmful effects of child marriages. As a result of these combined efforts with other stakeholders, GASO reported zero defilement cases (the legal term for sexual abuse) over the past four years, down from seven cases between 2021 and 2023. Attitudes are shifting with community leaders willing to marry off girls dropping from 17.9% to 5.8% between 2021 and 2023. This reflects a profound change in social norms.

Educational outcomes are also improving for children in these communities. Pass rates at Chikololere and Chipudzi primary schools rose from 70.8% and 23% to 94.2%, and dropout rates fell from 18.3% to 8.6%. To date, GASO has rescued 473 adolescents from child marriages, prevented 893 child marriages, and supported 121 survivors, reaching 2,724 children, 4,242 youth, and 3,800 parents, working with 169 government and community stakeholders.

Economic empowerment for households with child marriage survivors and at-risk girls has been key in addressing one of the root causes of child marriage: poverty. Through village savings and loans groups (VSLs), GASO supported 79 households in starting livestock farming and 150 parents in setting up small businesses, strengthening household resilience and income security. Beyond funding, they have mobilized over USD 5,000 from local resources to support their programs. To ensure long-term sustainability, they have built partnerships with other organizations and developed income-generating activities. Key to their success has been leveraging the trust and relationships they have built within the community.

Tikondwe CBO: Tackling the Roots of Child Marriage

In Traditional Authority Malemia, Zomba District, the community-based organization Tikondwe began by working closely with the community to identify the root causes of child marriage. Together, they surfaced various drivers such as poverty, illiteracy, peer pressure, poor parenting, and harmful cultural practices like night dances, among others.  

To tackle these root causes, Tikondwe worked closely with the community and other stakeholders to implement a variety of interventions. They created parenting circles and support programs that trained 92 parents to better meet their children’s basic needs. They also provided manure-making training to enhance household food security and psychosocial support training to prepare volunteers to assist survivors.  

To expand educational opportunities, 63 girls took part in learning visits to the University of Malawi, while goat pass-on programs supported 89 families in improving their livelihoods. Tikondwe also enhanced staff capacity, partnered with organizations like the Joyce Banda Foundation to support school-going children, and established income-generating poultry farming initiatives to ensure they have resources beyond project funding to continue their work within the community.

Tikondwe has built strong working relationships with their local government, resulting in a full-time, government-paid nurse being based at the organization’s offices to support community access to sexual and reproductive health and rights services.  

Lupakisho Nthakomwa, the social welfare officer for Zomba District, describes how their partnership has contributed to government effectiveness: "Because of the strong linkages on the ground, our social welfare office, which was experiencing limited human resources, is now able to work efficiently. We are stronger because we can rely on the different stakeholders and focal people on the ground to complement our work.” As a result of this collaboration, 69 child marriages have been annulled.

Ufuluwathu CBO: Bridging Borders to Protect Children

Ufuluwathu, a community-based organization operating in Senior Chief Nazombe and Nkhulambe in Phalombe district, near the Malawi-Mozambique border, has had to confront a unique challenge: perpetrators of child marriage and abuse crossing into Mozambique to evade justice. This reality pushed them to strengthen cross-community protection systems.

Working with more than 50 religious leaders through the Pastors Fraternal Council, alongside courts, police, chiefs, and child protection actors, Ufuluwathu has built a robust referral pathway for child abuse and child marriage cases. They have strengthened community structures such as mother-groups, with community-selected women following up on identified cases of child marriage, abuse, or school absenteeism. They do this by coordinating with schools to check on any reports and working with parents to address underlying causes before escalating cases to community policing forums and other relevant stakeholders.  

To effectively support at-risk girls and child marriage survivors, Ufuluwathu has implemented a livestock pass-on program for households of at-risk girls and survivors. They have also trained and set up 40 families in soap-making, enabling them to generate income to support children’s school needs. In addition, they supported the training and launch of a village savings and loan groups as well as several small business start-ups.

Firelight also provided the organization with support in governance, resource mobilization, and monitoring. This capacity-strengthening work aims to ensure that Ufuluwathu can sustain its efforts beyond Firelight funding, while communities themselves remain actively engaged in safeguarding children.

Simon Thipa, programs officer at Ufuluwathu, emphasizes how communities today take pride in systems they built themselves: “Right now, communities are proud that it is they who built the systems that have been able to help solve the issues that used to burden them.”  

Nancholi CBO: Breaking Cycles of Harmful Practices

When Firelight partnered with Nancholi community-based organization in 2019, child marriage was widespread across communities in Mangochi District. A community-mapping study revealed that poverty, peer pressure, harmful cultural practices such as Chitomero (teenage betrothal), and limited knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) were key drivers of child marriages.

Nancholi’s interventions have been comprehensive, addressing both the economic and social drivers of child marriage. Through economic empowerment initiatives, Nancholi has worked with households of at-risk girls and child marriage survivors, supporting 490 women through village savings and loans groups and strengthening the well-being of more than 1,400 children. Their goat pass-on programs initially reached 29 households, later expanding to over 40 new households. Soap-making and business skills training further enabled households to strengthen small businesses and improve household income.

Nancholi also provided school and learning support to more than 400 at-risk children and collaborated with 16 community policing forums to conduct school follow-ups and distribute learning materials to the learners. As a result, dropout rates in local schools fell from 15% in 2022 to 8% in 2025, while attendance rose from 76% to 92% over the same period. Access to SRHR services among youth increased from an average of 15 young people per week in 2022 to 22 per week in 2025. Teen pregnancies decreased from 52 cases in 2021 to 8 in 2025, while child marriages declined from 18 to 5 over the same period, with 100% of identified child marriages successfully terminated.  

To address harmful cultural practices, Nancholi organized cultural open days that highlighted positive role models and openly challenged practices such as Chitomero and overnight ceremonies. They also trained youth leaders to facilitate peer support networks and created anonymous reporting systems for child marriage cases.

To ensure sustainability beyond donor funding, a diesel-powered maize-hulling mill now generates operational income to support Nancholi’s ongoing work.  

Kadyalunda CBO: Community Solutions in Action

Kadyalunda community-based organization in Balaka District began its work in 2019 by mapping the root causes of child marriage. Some of the root causes that came to the surface were poverty, poor parenting skills, limited knowledge on SRHR, and harmful cultural practices.

Together with their communities and stakeholders, Kadyalunda translated these findings into action, implementing a range of interventions that engaged stakeholders from the community to the district level.  This was important in building relationships with key stakeholders and promoting shared ownership of the interventions.  

Kadyalunda then conducted training-of-trainers programs with 30 adolescents trained annually on SRHR, 50 youth club members on life skills, and 40 out-of-school girls trained, equipping them to train their peers in SRHR and life skills. They also held community awareness campaigns on the dangers of child marriage and available reporting mechanisms, alongside quarterly reviews to track progress and adapt interventions.  

Kadyalunda also established six youth clubs to provide peer-to-peer mentorship and safe spaces for youth and adolescents. Through these clubs, 226 girls were connected to peer networks, with 136 accessing SRHR knowledge and 126 building life skills. Recognizing that poverty is one of the drivers of child marriage, the organization worked with 560 at-risk girls and child marriage survivors, strengthening their economic capabilities through a goat pass-on program.

Through these interventions, they were able to rescue 76 girls from child marriages, terminate 46 marriages, with all the 46 girls receiving psychosocial support, and supported 36 survivors to return to school.

Kadyalunda emphasizes a simple but powerful lesson: problems identified by the community often have solutions within the community itself. They hope to sustain their work through their income-generating businesses, alongside ongoing capacity strengthening in resource mobilization, governance, finance, and computer skills that they have received over the years of the partnership with Firelight.  

Together, these five community-based organizations show that lasting change starts from within communities themselves. How they go about this work varies from community to community, but the effect they are having is remarkably similar. By leading the fight against child marriage, they are protecting children, empowering youth, supporting families economically, and eradicating harmful practices. Their achievements – from rescued girls to improved school attendance and sustainable income-generating programs – demonstrate the power of local ownership, collaboration, and resilience.

These stories from Malawi show that when communities lead, solutions last.

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