STEKAskills is a grassroots Scottish charity with Malawian/Diaspora/Scots trustees. We are led by the small Malawian NGO STEKA (Step Kids Awareness) run by women / children's rights campaigners Helen and Godknows Maseko. STEKA is a home where 100+ trauma and poverty-experienced children / young adults find alternative family and stability. STEKAskills fundraises and contributes expertise to extend STEKA's impact beyond the care home to marginalised young people & adults living in Rural Blantyre so more poverty & trauma experienced Malawians can empower themselves by developing the vocational skills, confidence, & agency needed to challenge structural inequalities and gender based violence.
We help fund a STEKA Centre for Vocational Skills and Community Enterprise comprising of 3 vocational skills teaching blocks, kitchen, agricultural farm, women's hostel and nursery on its campus in a deprived area of Blantyre Rural. By establishing small businesses the students (who receive free training) can work their way out of poverty. We also create a market in Scotland for the things they make.
In Scotland, we build solidarity by challenging aid-framed narratives of the Global Majority and engage communities through events, workshops, presentations and short films where poverty experienced Malawians speak for themselves - demonstrating their own resilience, ambition and focus. We have co-produced award-winning Dialogue Groups as an alternative to voluntourism in Malawi whereby Scottish school groups visiting Malawi pay for workshops run by a STEKA team instead of doing jobs on their behalf. Read more about how our dialogue approach is transforming Scottish as well as Malawian lives at www.stekaskills,com