When the HOPE Malawi team thought about HOPE’s strategic objective of serving the least served, one population that came to mind was refugees—specifically residents of the Dzaleka refugee camp, located about an hour outside the capital city of Lilongwe.

“We seek to serve the Dzaleka refugee community,” says Timothy Malaidza, HOPE Malawi’s operations manager, “because we see it as being financially underserved due to social and systemic exclusion.”

The Dzaleka refugee camp was established in 1994 to house people fleeing ethnic violence and conflict in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Taking its name from the Chichewa word meaning “I will never try again,” it currently houses around 50,000 refugees in a space meant for 14,000. Continue Reading…