Scotland Malawi Partnership

At a glance

Fields of work: Management / Human Resources

UK Link Partner: Network of Individuals, University
UK Link Partner County: Scotland

Developing Country Link Partner: Network of Individuals, University
Developing Country Link Partner: Malawi

Year Established: 2004

Link Details

The Scotland Malawi Partnership (SMP) is an umbrella organisation which exists to inspire the people and organisations of Scotland to be involved with Malawi in an informed, coordinated and effective way so that both nations benefit. We do this by providing a forum where ideas, activities and information can be shared on our website, through our online mapping tool and through regular workshops, training events and stakeholder meetings. We also publish good practice guides to harness the expertise of our members on key issues such as school partnerships, volunteering in Malawi and shipping goods to Malawi. By creating a single space for all the organisations and individuals in Scotland currently engaged with Malawi to come together, we help reduce duplication of effort, add value to Scotland’s historic civil society relationship with Malawi, and contribute towards poverty alleviation in Malawi.

We have over 500 members, all of whom have their own Malawi work/connections, you can search our member database and online mapping tool by visiting: www.scotland-malawipartnership.org/members.html. In addition to our formal membership we engage almost 200 Scottish schools with Malawi links, around 150 Malawians in Scotland, and about 250 Malawian organisations and individuals with Scottish links in Malawi. We also work closely with (and are funded by) the Scottish Government, we facilitate a Cross Party Group on Malawi in the Scottish Parliament, and we are starting to work with all 32 Scottish Local Authorities.

The SMP is underpinned by a historic bilateral civil society relationship based not on ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’ but on long-standing, mutually-beneficial community to community, family to family and people to people links. It is a relationship built on trust and mutual respect. This is a new and innovative mode of international development and we believe it is powerful force for change.

Within the SMP’s Scottish membership there are over a hundred organisations and individuals who have health-related links/interests between Scotland and Malawi. Each year the SMP organisers at least two health-related events to bring together and add value to what these 100+ members are doing between Scotland and Malawi. The SMP has also recently created a ‘Health Expert Group’ (HEG) – a group of experts from around Scotland and Malawi who, through a web-interface, can remotely answer enquiries relating to a specific clinical area (in 2010 the focus is maternal health) and feed into the writing of a paper looking at best practice in this field.