Malaya

"Malaya" means "help me" in the Kissi dialect of Liberia. According to the leadership of Malaya, the name of the organization suggests helping oneself and helping one another: a true community effort, this organization is an example of the ability and drive of war-affected people to solve their own problems and raise themselves out of chronic poverty.

Founded in 2007 in Bong Mines, a town about 100km away from Monrovia, but isolated because of poor infrastructure, Malaya is a rural women's group whose mission is to provide increased economic and educational opportunities to their families and community through farming. In September 2009, Niapele became Malaya's first wholesale reliable purchaser of crops. All of the commodities for the School Nutrition Initiative are sourced from Malaya.

Niapele's partnership with Malaya extends beyond the purchasing relationship, however, and we are assisting the women's group in acquiring the necessary business and technical skills to develop a profitable, sustainable agricultural enterprise.

Our work with Malaya represents Niapele's first foray into knowledge-intensive programming. In the spirit of fostering ownership and sustainability, we are not providing Malaya with financial support - instead, we are encouraging them and assisting them in developing their own financial capacity, so that they may reinvest in their organization and their community.

Through this initiative, we hope to demonstrate that besides a critical need for cash infusions and financial support, community-based groups involved in economic empowerment and pursuing for-profit activities first and foremost require a patient, steady transfer of skills, knowledge and capacity.

Our involvement with Malaya, as with our other initiatives, corresponds to one of the priorities enunciated by the Government of Liberia. The 2008 National Food and Nutrition Strategy notes that: "..exploiting all opportunities for food production by addressing the production constraints farmers face, including in rice production...In producing food, several priorities are noted, including diversification of food production for both nutritional and economic resiliency reasons, improving post-harvest processing, and safeguarding of communal resources that are important food sources."

About Malaya

After the war, the once thriving town of Bong Mines lay in devastation. Malaya’s founder, Finda Francis, saw an urgent need for the community to organize and begin a “war on poverty” (the organization’s motto). With not much more than a huge amount of compassion and generosity, and a talent for bringing people together, Finda, along with Pastor Anthony Fargbon and a few other community members, created Malaya in 2007.

In the early years, Malaya's main activity was to provide a type of microloan (known as "susu" in West Africa) to support women in the community who were struggling to send their children to school, pay medical bills and support their families, by empowering them to start a microenterprise.

Read more about Malaya in our December 2009 newsletter

Context

Almost two‐thirds of Liberians live below the poverty line, and the share is even higher in rural areas. Indicators on health, education, water, food security and infrastructure are all poor. Women are particularly vulnerable to poverty, especially in rural areas, both because of the precarious nature of women’s employment and because of more limited access to basic services such as health or education.

Read about how Liberians are encouraged to "go back to the soil", and the importance of food security for the country's post-conflict development.

Objectives

To source all food for the SNI in a responsible and sustainable manner that benefits the community, empowers women, and supports the growth of national agricultural production and economic independence.
To provide Malaya with a reliable source of income through our purchasing, and, as they build their capacity, to help them secure access to other, new markets.
To strengthen Malaya's administrative and financial operations through business and management training in order for the group to maintain a stable business, and continue to grow in order to provide jobs and re-invest in the community.
To extend Niapele's reach outside of the city of Monrovia to the rural areas, where there is a real need for the stabilization and strengthening of sound community-based initiatives.

Niapele & Malaya

At the onset, our partnership was entered in the spirit of a fair trade purchasing contract. But, throughout the initial meetings, we discovered a deeper potential for a partnership with Malaya. While the members and leadership of Malaya have been helping themselves admirably, they have been lacking the tools and skills necessary to grow, turn a profit and reinvest responsibly.

Through a long term partnership with this group, we hope to assist them in achieving their goal of lifting their community out of poverty, and creating new opportunities for growth, education and advancement for their children.

In addition to Malaya’s contract with Niapele to provide food crops for our School Nutrition Initiative, the partnership also includes a strong capacity-building dimension. Niapele is assisting Malaya in:

Developing its financial and operational management capacity

Improving the group’s ability to fulfill the quality and quantity requirements of a reliable agricultural supplier

Accessing business and technical expertise to increase the efficiency and profitability of their operations

Assisting the organization in securing new market outlets for their products
- The MacDella Cooper Foundation joined the SNI in December 2009 and is purchasing food crops to feed 60 scholarship children per month from Malaya.

Working with the leadership and the group's members to develop a long-term strategy for reinvestment of profits into community improvement projects