TRANSFORM has been adopted and rolled out as an official capacity building initative
Outcome achieved
Government of Malawi through Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development adopted TRANSFORM as a social protection education/capacity building initiative in December 2018. The training concept was applied in four districts, and at national level. Three sessions of the TRANSFORM training were held targeting policy makers, civil society organizations and technical heads of departments. Roll out plan for TRANSFORM trainings has been drawn to cover more districts, including politicians and heads of ministries.
ILO's contribution to the outcome
With support from the project financed by the Government of Ireland, the ILO supported the Malawi Government to conduct TRANSFORM trainings and sensitization meetings at national and district levels. Between July, 2018 and June, 2019, 23 officials of central Government, 60 district officers, 15 directors and deputy directors, and 13 officials from the Government, CSOs and Development partners (in total 70 male and 41 female) were trained in TRANSFORM concept. The national rollout plan is to reach all 28 districts by 2021.
Gender equality & non-discrimination
The ILO is actively promoting gender equality in its training activities, by advocating for equitable participation of women in trainings and by mainstreaming gender issues and non-discrimination in its contents. TRANSFORM sensitization meetings advocate for the participation of women in trainings and the inclusion of partners at district level engaged directly with inclusion initiatives.
International Labour Standard
TRANSFORM trainings promote rights based social protection, with direct reference and content to inform participants on Recommendation 202 (2012) on the Social Protection Floors. Furthermore, in the awareness and training activities related to the Universal Social Pensions, the ILO is promoting the principles of universality, equality and rights based social protection.
Social dialogue
The 2018 Social Protection Week proved to be a remarkable catalyst for dialogue, bringing together government, development partners, academia, and civil society to discuss the advance of social protection in Malawi. The TRANSFORM package has dialogue as one of its principles. This was further amplified by close consultations between partners and government to ensure the relevance of the programme to Malawi, but even more with the recipients of the trainings, through sensitization and follow-up meetings with the selected Districts.