UNICEF

Today was my (unofficial) first day of work.  Right when I got here I interviewed with UNICEF for a consulting job (and I mean almost literally right when I got here -- I got the email asking me to come to interview while en route from Dulles to Addis Ababa).  They needed someone to help them create and implement an action plan following their Violence Against Children survey that they completed last year.  The VACS is basically the first comprehensive look at children's experiences with sexual, physical, and emotional violence in Malawi.  The results are generally depressing (the very bottom line, a lot of children are abused).  As one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world (#174 out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index), it is not surprising that Malawi's social welfare systems, including child protection, are in the infancy stage of their development.  The hope is that VACS will be a mobilizer for change and focus the attention of decision-makers on the plight of children.

Anyway, after the interview, I got a job offer but still haven't signed a contract as my paperwork slowly weaves its way through the UNICEF bureaucratic machinery.  Today was the last day of the regional UNICEF conference that just so happened to be held in Lilongwe.  There were representatives from all over East and Southern Africa, including Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Burundi, Swaziland, and South Sudan to name a few.  It was a nice way for me to get my feet wet and start to get the overall big picture of what child protection is like in Africa (not surprisingly there's a much different set of challenges than we deal with in our work in the U.S.) before I dive into my very specific VACS project.  I will probably/hopefully sign my contract and officially start next week.