When I arrived, the 2009 team was starting its training and I was there to be a Group Teacher for them for 6 months. I was working with Project Leaders and others Group Teachers, in total 2 PLs and 6 GTs. As a Group Teacher my duties were to organize, plan, manage and supervise, mobilize, give courses and correct tasks in the DmM database, create new possibilities and develop the students’ personal skills. Generally, I can say to be together with the students as teacher, a friend and a counselor for 24 hours a day.

Among all my duties that I put in practice, one stood out for me especially as a driving force. Developing the students’ personal skills, abilities and talents gave me strength to reach the goals that I wished myself to achieve. Of course, to make the whole idea become true I also had to deal with all my other responsibilities.

This idea came up during “Malawi our Country” period when we had an investigation week in a typical rural community to experience the real life in the bush. Those days we were based in Msambamwali Primary School, Lirangwe – a village near our TTC. Living the rural life in reality the DAPP students were very close to their future as teachers of rural primary schools. And for the first time I was deep in what we can call REAL AFRICA!!

The theme of our investigation was to find out what the community thinks about women empowerment and its impact on child education. We walked out into the villages in smaller groups to talk to the local people and interview them in order to search about their thoughts about the theme, to learn more about their living conditions and their attitudes concerning education standards.

During this investigation week the students’ teachers and group teachers had time to share experiences with the community and to conclude on our researches we made an Open Day for the community. It took place on the 24^th October 2009, when we presented several activities as well as a theater play, called AMAYI (meaning woman in the local Chichewa language), about the theme and our discoveries. I was overwhelmed to see the students acting and interpreting the reality of the Malawian society.

The aim of the play was to promote gender equality and women empowerment as human rights that lie at the heart of development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals^[1]. To be sustainable, the women empowerment process must alter both their self-perception and control over their lives and the existing material environment.

Having seen the success of that Open Day, I had an idea to take that drama to others places, spreading the information and sharing with more people our findings, promoting the students and their thoughts about their own society.

So, the idea has developed itself from an ordinary play to a project! I wrote to my TTC Project leadership about what we have done in our investigation week and also our responsibilities being teachers and human beings, who want to see changes in our world. Women empowerment must not be viewed as in terms of increasing their incomes, assets, employment etc., but in term of building their capacities to plan, monitor and evaluate their living standards by eradicating illiteracy and being independent. In order to be truly empowered, women must be able to go beyond their image of themselves as eternal victims, to transcend their self-perception towards greater control over their lives and environment, and women must see themselves as independent people that can do whatever they want, without men’s order. This internal change in a society is very difficult to be achieved, as we have experienced in our own western world, because cultural barriers and traditions of behavior are the most heavy obstacles to these changes.

With all this in mind I wrote to the Project, as I said, about my idea of DAPP TTC Art Theater to promote women empowerment, and then I went to Iben Peterson (the Principal of DAPP TTC) to get her approval. Well done! I got it. Green light!

Next step was to go to the government and try to get any support… After all, it is all about cooperation between civil society and State social responsibilities! Fortunately I met Patricia Kaliati, Minister of Gender, Child and Community Development and she gave her support when she saw our objectives. And our objectives were: to spread women empowerment issue, to contribute for people empower themselves, to perform for community and ordinary people as an unique socio-political action, to encourage freedom, independence, productivity, maturity and respect for the rights and viewpoints of others regardless of their ethnic/tribal group, race, color, gender, religion, marital status, disability and sexual orientation.

Meanwhile I went to the French Cultural Centre and presented our project in order to get a sponsorship and we got it.

So, with all these achievements and hard work we took our theater play to the French Cultural Centre in Blantyre, one of the biggest Cultural Center in Malawi. FROM THE VILLAGES STRAIGHT TO THE CAPITAL.

At the same time I was working hard with the DAPP students doing our rehearsals constantly and making all the necessary production for our play. By utilizing songs, dance and movement as a medium of education, a culturally appropriate methodology of education based on grass-root involvement has been created.

The big day has come - 30^th of January. From 15 to 17 o’clock. The Television was there. Journalists and reports from different types of media, press were there, too. Most importantly the people that we were expecting were also there: our audience. Women and children, men and young people, actors and directors, DAPP staff members and all DAPP students that weren’t acting directly with us were all there.

The performance was a really successful one!! (Read below what The Daily Times, a Malawian newspaper, wrote about our play).

To be in the capital instead of presenting the play in our College and its surroundings were a big challenge for everybody, including me, because although my experience could help me, a new play is always a new play and much more if we take into account that each and every single piece of it was created by us, by our theater group, made by the students and the teachers. In addition to that, the theatre format with democratic participation and full creation from our group develops participatory educational performances in an area, where open discussion about women empowerment is often taboo, yet informal debate is practically difficult utilizing current models of education. This format also enables audiences to get accurate information and access individual advice.

This art theater project for women empowerment education was an action of all together: DAPP teachers, students, group teachers and STAFF working in co-operation and friendly environment.

That was established with the objective of developing integration between gender equality and women's empowerment and also to use the theater as an educational method.

In this present moment our project is going to be run by Blessings Kambewua, one of the most important lecturers at DAPP TTC Chilangoma, what makes me say that the project has achieved sustainability!!! They will present another play in the end of March! Cheers!!!

By Mariana A. Miranda

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