Welcome to the MTENDERE: Malawi Teachers for Peace blog. Everyone of us is a teacher of some sort, and we work for peace and social justice in one way or another. Welcome!
The word "Mtendere" means "peace" in Chichewa. As an acronym, for our purposes, MTENDERE stands for Malawi Teachers for Nonviolence, self-Determination and Research in Education.
The idea behind this group goes back to February 2004, when a group of Malawian primary school teachers collaborated on a peace education project. While many in the group dropped the idea as soon as the project ended, a few teachers picked up the ball and ran with it, and have continued to infuse peace education into their day to day pedagogy. Two of these, Austin Gwirang'ona and Andrews Nchessie, exemplify the best of Malawian teachers in embracing an ideal and making it part of their daily practice. In 2004 Austin was a primary school teacher in the Bwanje Valley area, and is now a secondary school teacher at Sharpe Valley Day Secondary School, also in the Bwanje Valley. Andrews was at the time a teacher at the Kasungu TTC Demonstration Primary School, and is now a lecturer at the Kasungu Teachers' Training College.
As we build this blog, we will be sharing more accounts of our activities since 2004, including ongoing projects. We also welcome your own accounts of teaching and educating about peace in Malawi and elsewhere. We define teaching and peace and in broad way, to include teachers at all levels of education, and in all forms, including tertiary education, and community work.
We also have a facebook group, which we welcome you to consider joining: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10983548029&ref=mf
Mtendere kwa nonse,
Zikomo!
