Caritas Malawi, otherwise known as the Catholic Development Commission in Malawi (CADECOM), aims to create awareness and empower the disadvantaged to undertake development that is integral, sustainable and gender and environmentally sensitive; and that promotes justice, dignity and self reliance through people’s participation so that they take responsibility for their future.

Caritas Malawi is involved in relief programmes in cases of emergency such as the droughts and floods that regularly afflict the country, providing food, clothing and shelter. It contributes to household food security by providing food, farm tools and other inputs to farming families in need and assisting with the construction of agricultural infrastructures.

The population of Malawi is 13.2 million, of whom 21 percent live on less than US$1 per day and 27 percent have no access to safe drinking water.

Caritas Malawi works with partners in development projects in response to the many problems that affect the country, such as scarcity of fuelwood – effectively the only source of energy – poverty and loss of production as a result of HIV and AIDS; the large number of orphans is also an alarming result of the pandemic. A variety of other social and environmental impacts such as hunger, air pollution, climate change, lack of access to resources, over-cultivation and shortage of land are also barriers to improved livelihoods.

In response to chronic food insecurity caused by political, socio-economic and environmental vulnerability, CADECOM designed a disaster management project, with assistance from Cordaid - Caritas Netherlands, aimed at institutionalising the concept of disaster risk management in communities.