JOYCE MVULA NETBALL CAMPS MALAWI 2022

Hello, my name is Joyce Mvula, and I am the founder of the Joyce Mvula foundation. Our aim at the foundation is to reach out and provide young Malawian girls with a good foundation to excel in Netball, Academically and in all areas of life. One of the cornerstones of this initiative are the girl camps which we run every summer when its holiday season in the Malawian school calendar. Working hand in hand with the Netball Association of Malawi, we recruit young girls ages 14-18 (playing within the youth netball division) to attend these 2 day camps where they get to participate in various activities tailored intentionally to help develop them individually. These activities include netball coaching clinics to help them develop their technical netballing skills by our team of experienced and charismatic coaches, life skills and career guidance groups where we discuss life outside netball involving areas such as personal grooming, behaviour, work ethic in academics as well as mental health just to name a few. All these activities are purposefully put together with the intention of helping these young girls individually to not leave the camps the same way they came in. In addition to these, catering of food as well as health sport beverages and transportation is provided to all participants.

When I started out playing youth netball I was young and needed guidance as well as mentorship to help me grow and mature in my character as well as responsibilities. This is what we offer to all these amazing young girls. We see Malawi’s future leaders, mothers and pioneers of development in these young girls. 

 

When we launched last year we had these 2 day camps in the cities of Blantyre (a commercial hub, south of Malawi) and Lilongwe (the capital city, in the central region). This year our target is to organize and execute these 2 day camps in both these cities and add one more city, Mzuzu (located in the northern region of Malawi). We trained a total of 60 girls, aged between 14-18 years of age. 

 

As aforementioned, we boldly believe that these initiatives will bear fruit in the future and will help Malawi as a country in the long term develop further as a nation due to presence of individual and strong women who have been well mentored and invested in. Therefore, the fruit what we hope to see is not just towards Netball in Malawi but towards the country as a whole.