Preserving cultural heritage: A community-centric approach to safeguarding the Khulubvi Traditional Temple Malawi.

The study investigates cultural heritage conservation through community-based participatory research, focusing on preserving the Khulubvi Traditional Temple. It addresses challenges from religious, societal, and economic changes and the importance of integrating heritage into education. It emphasizes technology's role in maintaining sacred narratives. Qualitative methods, such as interviews and thematic analysis, reveal community efforts and modern challenges. The study concludes with a call to embed heritage in formal education and highlights the community's crucial role in cultural legacy, contributing to the discourse on heritage preservation.

Assessing farmers' knowledge of environmental policy along the Ayeyarwady River: Strides towards the Indian Ocean marine life safety.

The Ayeyarwady River Basin in Myanmar is grappling with severe environmental challenges, including soil erosion and water pollution, primarily driven by unsustainable agricultural practices. This study aims to evaluate farmers' awareness of environmental policies and identify barriers to their effective implementation. In-depth interviews were conducted with 45 stakeholders, encompassing farmers, government officials, and researchers. The findings highlight a significant lack of policy awareness among farmers, exacerbated by socio-cultural, economic, and institutional obstacles. These barriers impede the successful application of environmental policies, perpetuating environmental degradation. The study advocates for integrative strategies that encompass education, community engagement, and adaptive policy frameworks to address these complex issues. Detailed policy implications are provided, offering insights into potential solutions for enhancing the region's environmental governance and sustainable development. This research contributes to understanding the critical interplay between policy awareness and ecological management, underscoring the importance of targeted interventions to mitigate environmental threats.

Unraveling agricultural water pollution despite an ecological policy in the Ayeyarwady Basin.

BACKGROUND: The Ayeyarwady Basin in Myanmar, a critical economic zone, faces severe ecological degradation due to unsustainable agricultural practices. These practices pose significant threats to human health and marine biodiversity. Environmental threats persist despite the Myanmar government's efforts to implement biodiversity protection policies. This research explores the limited compliance with environmental protection policies among farmers in the Ayeyarwady Basin and its implications for sustainable agricultural practices and ecological conservation. METHODS: This research employs an exploratory phenomenological approach, utilizing semi-structured, in-depth interviews with government officials and farmers (N = 30). The data collected were subjected to thematic analysis using Atlas 23. RESULTS: Preliminary findings reveal a gap in farmers' awareness and understanding of these policies, hindered by insufficient financing, poor communication infrastructure, and uncoordinated policy monitoring. These factors and existing unrest contribute to a top-down policy approach that neglects frontline stakeholders. The study suggests the need for clear stakeholder roles, adequate policy financing, and diverse communication strategies to effectively implement environmental policies and protect human and marine life. CONCLUSIONS: Environmental policy shortcomings in Myanmar are attributable to governmental oversight and insufficient stakeholder engagement. To mitigate pollution and safeguard river basin ecosystems, the government must delineate stakeholder responsibilities, allocate appropriate policy funding, and adopt varied communication approaches with farmers.

Unraveling substance abuse among Malawian street children: A qualitative exploration.

This qualitative study adopts a phenomenological and symbolic interactionist approach to comprehensively explore substance abuse among street children in Lilongwe, Malawi. The research aims to uncover the complex sociocultural, economic, and environmental determinants influencing substance abuse within this marginalized cohort. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews, the study engages with street children to understand their subjective experiences, perceptions, and interpretations of substance abuse within their community context. Employing convenience, purposive, and snowball sampling strategies, the research collected data from street children, acknowledging their transient nature and societal challenges. Thematic analysis was conducted on interview transcripts to derive comprehensive insights. Results revealed five key thematic areas: familial absence and emotional void, societal normalization and peer pressure, economic hardships, coping mechanisms, environmental accessibility, and peer influence and belongingness. These themes highlighted the intricate interplay between personal experiences, socio-environmental factors, and peer dynamics, shaping the prevalence and persistence of substance abuse among street children. This study's implications for practice underscore the need for tailored interventions and support mechanisms addressing substance abuse within this demographic. It emphasizes the urgency for context-specific strategies and policy formulations aimed at ameliorating the challenges faced by street children dealing with substance abuse in Malawi. Ultimately, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of substance abuse among marginalized street children, advocating for compassionate and contextually sensitive interventions within this overlooked drug abusers' population subset.

Impact of ethnic identity and geographical home location on student academic performance.

Situated against the backdrop of a politically fueled ethnic hate between the Northern Region and the rest, this study exposes the relationship between the students' regions of origin and their academic performance in Malawian higher education to contribute to appropriate student support and healthy study habits. Spearman's rHO indicated weak but statistically significant correlations between one's home region and academic performance. Kruskal Wallis Test (N = 20,263) revealed that no single region outperforms others. Thematic analysis of interview data (N = 15) through NVivo revealed that students believe effort matters more in academic performance irrespective of one's region of origin. Implications for education policy that harness healthy study habits to enhance student achievement, retention, and self-efficacy about success are discussed.

An investigation of the Sustainability of Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) amidst Covid-19 and its impact on household income levels: lessons from Malawi, Sub-Saharan Africa.

BACKGROUND: Food security, malnutrition, and poverty are some of the challenges that most of the sub-Saharan African countries have been historically facing. With the coming of Covid-19 pandemic, the sustainability of the Village Savings and Loans Association which are formed to counter fight these challenges is questioned. AIM: This study aimed to assess factors associated with the Sustainability of VSLAs amidst Covid-19 and its impacts on households' income levels. METHODS: An online cross-sectional design was conducted from November to January 2021, targeting VSLAs members in Mzuzu. A snowball and respondent-driven sampling technique were used to recruit the needful participants using a referral approach. IBM SPSS version 23 was used to perform descriptive statistics, Chi-Square, and binary logistic regression with unstandardized Beta (ß), Odds Ratios (OR), and 95% Confidence Interval (CI) being taken into account with P-value set at 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01 significance levels. RESULTS: Our study finds that household income declined by 54% for those earnings belonged to ˂ MK5,000, as compared to 38% and 15% for medium (MK5,000 ≥ MK10,000) and higher (> MK10,000) income bands respectively. Our study shows that gender (ß = 0.437, p = 0.094), age-group (ß = 1.317, p = 0.000), education (ß = 2.181, p = 0.047), share contributions (ß = 1.035, p = 0.008), meetings (ß = 0.572, p = 0.021), occupation (ß = -0.453, p = 0.106), and frequency of meeting (ß = -0.507, p = 0.049) were positively and negatively statistically significant predictors. CONCLUSION: According to the findings of this study, households with lower income earners, which is one of the indicators of poverty, are more affected by the pandemic than their counterparts. We urge that the Malawi governments should maintain and, if they haven't already, implement programs that support low-income households, such as transfer payments, which have been shown to uplift people out of income poverty in many developing countries.