History

In 2004, Chitani Community Sustainable Development Organization (CHICOSUDO) was founded and registered with Malawi Government as a Community Based Organization. CHICOSUDO is a Malawian nongovernmental organization. Since 2005 to 2017, CHICOSUDO had been working in Blantyre and bring impacts in the lives of women and children through early childhood development, gender based violence prevention, HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support, food security. In 2012, it changes it’s status and name from Chitani CBO to Chitani Community Sustainable Development Organization. Later in 2017 it expanded from 50 villages to 100 villages in two districts, namely; Blantyre and Mulanje. In 2022, it registered with Malawi Non-governmental Board (NGO Board). As of 2012, 20,000 marginalized women and children were impacted.

From 2017 to 2021, CHICOSUDO expanded it’s catchment from Blantyre to Mulanje. Through this period, CHICOSUDO had been impacting 15,000 marginalized women and children through end child marriage campaigns, supporting education for girls, early childhood development, water sanitation and hygiene and sexual reproductive health.

About The Founder

My name is Samson W. Mulole, the founder and an Executive Director. Am a retired officer who worked with Malawi government under Ministry of Agriculture for 25 years. Through my services with Government, learnt how women and children face to get their basic needs in communities across Malawi. After my retirement in 2001, I joined other organizations who were working to support orphans and vulnerable children across Malawi. Through this new venture also, I added the passion on women and children. In 2004 I resigned again after being convinced and trust that with like minded people, we can do something to save women and children starting from home.

About The Co-founder

My name is Lesley Kapile, I was appointed by community members to represent them. Am a Community Development worker by professional and an entrepreneur. My passion of saving women and children especially those from poor households to be self reliance was started in the late 1999 while I was at primary and secondary school. I also had the same mind and belief that, children can be well saved when their mother is empowered economically. While I was at Secondary School in 2000 to 2004, I had friends from poor families who were failing to pay school fees, enough good clothes to wear. But they had passion of being educated until the school administration allowed them to be learning for free. This experience, encouraged me to make bold vision of supporting poor children to pursuer with their education in the future after being employed. After passing my Malawi School Certificate of Education in 2003, I planned to be Electrician, unfortunately these dreams failed due to sudden death of my father. The relatives of my father grabbed all property. But these challenges could not stopped me from my old dreams. In 2008, a year after the burial of my father, I remembered that before his death, he gave a little amount of money to be saved in the Bank for future use. It was a sawing seed. Then I searched the course that could be align with my dream. Then I paid for Computer Training Course. Since then, I started to trust that, with vision, all is possible. At every time, CHICOSUDO is joined with like minded women and men who use their time and resources to bring about change to the marginalized people in the community.

Areas of Focus

From 2022 to 2025, CHICOSUDO is focusing on
• Empowering 500 women to be self-reliant through vocational skills, entrepreneurship, access to finance for enterprise development.
• Increased access to health services by children with disabilities.
• Promote access to both primary and secondary education among marginalized girls by addressing key barriers.