Katharine Thomas works as a Community Health Empowerment Project volunteer in Nsanja, Malawi, focusing on maternal and child health through education and capacity building. She works with clinic and community volunteers to improve reporting and data use. Her nutrition club provides trainings on food diversity, cooking demonstrations, and fish farming. When WorldFish researchers Lulu and Muleya visited her district, she collaborated by assisting with materials and pond sampling. The second volunteer established fish farms in Kani Village, training 30 farmers over three days and helping form a cooperative of 15 members. After two years, there were over 30 operational ponds. As a WorldFish Extension Volunteer, she connected other volunteers with WorldFish and gathered information

1. Peace Corps Experience
Katharine Thomas and Taryn Cadena
Community Health Empowerment Project (CHEP) Volunteer in
Nsanja, Luwingu District, Northern Province
Project Description: The CHEP program focuses on improving maternal and
child health in our communities through capacity building and educational
interventions. As a CHEP volunteer in Nsanja, I work mainly with the clinic and
community based volunteers. We work to improve reporting activities and data
usage to better understand the public health situations in their individual
communities. With our nutrition club in the community, we have done trainings
on diversifying food, giving cooking demonstrations, and patient sensitive
counseling. This same group has received a training from myself and another
Peace Corps Volunteer on the benefits of fish farming for household nutrition.
Experience with WorldFish: When Lulu and Muleya arrived in Luwingu to work
on the PRUNSAR project, they reached out to the volunteers in the district in
order to collaborate with us. I have been able to work with them in the field on
several occasion including assisting them with public health trainings materials
and in sampling two ponds in September.
Rural Aquaculture Project (RAP) Extension Volunteer with
WorldFish in Northern Province
Project Description: I assisted a group of interested fish farmers in Kani Village, Kawambwa
District, Luapula, in the process of independently establishing and managing small-scale
earthen fish ponds. When I arrived there was one male farmer who farmed fish using sub-par
techniques. In partnership with that farmer and a prospective fish farmer who worked as my
work and language counterpart, we held a three-day aquaculture workshop of which 30
interested farmers (5 women) in the area completed. My counterpart and I independently
trained interested fish farmers in the community and after one year we helped to establish a
fish farming co-operative with 15 active members, 2 of which are women. After two years,
and each trained fish farmer became confident enough to train others, there were over 30
ponds established and in operation in Kani Village.
Experience with Worldfish: My experience as a WorldFish Peace Corps Extension Volunteer
has been working as part of the NORAD project in Kasama. I have also focused my efforts on
connecting Peace Corps volunteers with WorldFish and gathering information on the potential
to scale up project across the Northern, Luapula and Muchinga Provinces. At the end of
February I will be joining the IFAD/EU PRUNSAR project to assist the team in sampling 20
ponds, conducting end lines surveys (n=54), inputting data and closing out the project in
Luwingu.
Conclusion: Peace Corps Volunteers have a unique perspective living in rural villages and working in one of four project
fields; aquaculture, agroforestry, health, and education. WorldFish can benefit from the intimate knowledge that
volunteers gain while living in their communities to assess the viability of a WorldFish project in these areas. Information
gained about the natural history, local politics, outside influence and aid, and various other factors may already be
known, and by initially consulting with Peace Corps Volunteers, it's possible for WorldFish to save time and resources
otherwise used collecting that data. In addition to this, both health and aquaculture volunteers can work hand-in-hand
with WorldFish to facilitate community meetings and act as on-the-ground sources of information and support. Through
collaboration, we can collectively ease the process of data collection and maximize the impact that both Peace Corps
Volunteers and WorldFish projects are able to have on communities.
Pictured left: A
Nutrition Club
member and
mother
preparing bean
sausages during
a cooking
demonstration.
Pictured below: A
Community-based volunteer
poses by his fish pond in
Nsanja.
Pictured right: A fish farmer
and his family observes their
reconstructed fish pond in
Kani Village.
Pictured below: An anti-theft and
predation design is demonstrated
by an experienced fish farmer in
Kani Village.