Proud to Support Series
FFH proudly partnered with Joyful Motherhood in 2016.
Chimwemwe mu’bereki (Joyful Motherhood) is a grassroots organization devoted to helping high risk postpartum mothers and babies in Malawi through supporting home based care and nutrition assistance.
Joyful Motherhood is the Malawian sister organization of African Mothers Health Initiative (AMHI). Founded by Joanne Jorissen Chiwaula and Beatrice Namaleu to carry out the work in Malawi, Chimwemwe mu’bereki is registered with the Council for Non-Governmental Organizations in Malawi and underwent a financial audit in 2011.
Joyful Motherhood provides home based nursing care to vulnerable moms and babies in Lilongwe, District, Malawi.
The success of their programs directly reflects of the quality of nursing care we provide to the women and babies in our care. In order to ensure that the fragile babies we enroll on their second or third day of life survive beyond their first birthday, Joyful Motherhood needs excellent nurses who are passionate about our mission. Since the majority of the work occurs in communities where little or no English is spoken, and where an understanding of the cultural context is key, Joyful Motherhood hires only Malawian nurses. While they need great Malawian nurses, they do not want to hire nurses away from government posts. Malawi is experiencing a chronic and extreme shortage of nurses (the World Health Organization estimates that almost half of nursing posts in Malawi are currently vacant). They recognize that by hiring nurses out of the public sector they are mitigating one problem while exacerbating another, so in order to avoid this, Joyful Motherhood only hires full-time nurses who have previously retired from government service and offers per diem positions to nurses who are currently full-time government employees.
Joyful Motherhood has two programs: Baby Care and Mother Care
Mother Care Program
AMHI’s Mother Care Program identifies critically ill postpartum women at Bwaila Maternity Hospital and Kamuzu Central Hospital. These women are paired with a Joyful Motherhood nurse who follows the woman to her home community and provides support for her. . .
Baby Care Program
In our Baby Care Program, nurses identify vulnerable infants immediately after birth and provide these babies home-based nursing care for one year. . . .
Meet the Team:
- Beatrice Namaleu
Beatrice is the Baby Care Program Manager and Acting Director but more importantly, she is the heart of Chimwemwe mu’bereki. She is a Malawian nurse with over 30 years experience in maternal and child health. Beatrice has been with Joyful Motherhood from day one and both the survival and growth of the organization is in great part due to her efforts – walking miles and miles in the villages, spending hours educating mothers and communities, recruiting and training program nurses, repeatedly educating hospital staff to ensure that babies do not slip through the cracks, networking to spread the word about our work. Beatrice is the original shining star in our small but growing galaxy. - Mrs. Esnart MasekoEsnart is the program manager for our Mother Care program. She has been a nurse for 36 years and joined our team in 2009. During her 36 years in nursing she worked in almost every specialty area, but spent a significant portion of those years in community health nursing. In her words, “I am proud of my work with mothers and babies because my utlimate goal is to reduce the high mortality rate of high risk postpartum mothers so that the number of orphans should also decrease.” Esnart is a mother of six.
- Mrs. Nitta ChakanikaNitta is an incredibly dedicated nurse in our Baby Care Program. She has 10 years of nursing experience. Her past experience includes work in family planning, working with Action Against Hunger, and work in the public sector with HIV patients. About her current work, Nitta says “I have a passion for working with infant orphans and low birth weight babies. I also enjoy working in the community setting and doing the health education. Joyful Motherhood has given me a lovely broad experience.” Nitta is the mother of three beautiful girls.
Please visit www.joyfulmotherhood.org for more information about Joyful Motherhood and the source information for this page.
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