Catholic Women Organization (CWO) of the Roman Catholic Church in Malawi has disclosed plans to make huge investments in economic projects that would generate resources for its operations and interventions.

CWO Projects Team member Lucy Vokhiwa made the remarks on the sidelines of the two-day resource mobilization training workshop organized for the organization’s leaders and technical personnel from all the eight dioceses in Malawi.

Vokhiwa At 50 CWO needs to move out of dependence of contributions from its members Photo by Watipaso Mzungu — Vokhiwa–At 50, CWO needs to move out of dependence of contributions from its members–Photo by Watipaso Mzungu

Vokhiwa, who is also Board Member of the World Union of the Catholic Women Organization (WUCWO), said the envisaged investments are aimed at broadening the organization’s resource base.

“The training has therefore been organized to equip chairpersons and technical personnel with necessary skills for fundraising and mobilizing resources to enable them achieve their goal. It’s time CWO should be moving forward because we have had 50 years of setting ourselves up, and there’s a lot of work that we have done. Now, we are saying we should take a step further. CWO should be able to mobilize resources, make huge investments and challenge ourselves. We are beyond the stage where we should be relying on women’s contributions to run our organization,” she narrated.

CWO chairpersons and technical personnel pose for a photo--Photo by Watipaso Mzungu — CWO chairpersons and technical personnel pose for a photo–Photo by Watipaso Mzungu

She challenged CWO leaders and members to collaborate in raising funds and resources for the implementation of various interventions at local and national level.

CWO chairlady for the Archdiocese of Lilongwe, Christina Lupia, described the training as timely, stressing that the skills acquired will enable them to achieve effectiveness and efficiency in their programmes.

On his part, facilitator of the training Richard Kusseni said resource mobilization is key in ensuring that the organization gets funds needed to implement its various projects as well as a critical step on the path out of aid dependence.

Kusseni said the resource mobilization training was therefore designed to help CWO leadership to identify right type of resource, at the right time, at the right price with making the right use of acquired resources thus ensuring optimum utilization of the same.