FDH Bank win Illovo Sugar Malawi ‘Rise for Girls’ inaugural golf tournament

The FDH Bank golf team has been crowned champions of the Illovo Sugar Malawi Plc’s inaugural golf tournament called ‘Rise for Girls’, a newly launched initiative whose main objective is to empower girls education by addressing some of the menstrual challenges in the country.

The program will among other things seeks to be raising funds that will be used to purchase menstrual health items which will be going towards helping both primary and secondary school learners who mostly have no access to appropriate sanitary health wear which contribute to school dropout  as well as poor performance in their classes.

The official launch of the golf tournament which took place at Blantyre Sports Club (BSC), saw FDH Bank scoring 47 points and automatically emerged as winners of the main category after being outstanding against the second place team, Unitrans which scored 46 points while NICO General finished on  fourth position with 45 points.

In the Men’s Longest Drive category, Evance Songole became the winner whereas the Laddies Longest Drive went to Sera Pilingu while Grey Teweta and Wose Kamphulusa won the Nearest to the Pin category respectively.

Speaking during the event, Maria Tandwe who scored a handicap of 20 in the FDH Bank team described the competition as one the best in terms competitiveness adding that despite starting off badly as a team, they quickly managed to recover through team work as they were complimenting each other.

“Honestly, the competition was very tough but the secrete behind our victory was only based on proper training which we’ve been doing before the tournament,” said Tandwe.

She further thanked Illovo Sugar Malawi for introducing the Rise for Girls program saying it is a very good course as many girls in the country are struggling to concentrate on their education because majority of them fail to attend classes whenever they are experiencing menstruation.

“This initiative will surely help to give young school-going girls courage to keep working hard classes and be able to compete well with boys when it comes to performance during. As a woman I’m really happy for this and this is why I saw it worth to be part of the launch and play golf,” added Tandwe who also encouraged more women to join the sport.

Managing Director for Illovo Sugar Malawi, Lekani Katandula expressed delighted with the excellent turnout from both individuals and business partners who came to support the initiative.

Katandula said, the major target of the program is to ensure they keep more girls in school so that they’re given bigger opportunity to excel in their studies and have better futures in their lives.

“Lack of proper sanitary heath materials is currently a burden to many girls and has a negative impact to our education, as such we want to try our level best to deal with the challenge and I know that with support from well-wishers we can achieve the mission.

“So far as Illovo we have set aside a total of K100 million for the initiative but we believe that we’ll have other partners who will join us to make sure the program assist our girls positively,” said Katandula.

Earlier during the day, before the official launch of the Rise for Girls initiative, Illovo Sugar Malawi visited Namikasi Secondary School in Lirangwe, Blantyre where the company donated  various sanitary heath hygiene items such as, reusable sanitary pads, backets and soap, to a total of 200 learners.

Namikasi Secondary School, head teacher Olafu Pidala Sanga described the donation as timely gesture which he said will play a big role in reducing absenteeism among girls which has been a challenge as many learners comes from families where parents can not afford to buy sanitary heath materials.

Head-Girl for the school,  Lucy Shonga said; “We are very overwhelmed with the support and we want to assure Illovo that this initiative will  make us to improve our performances in class and encouraged our fellow learners who dropped out of school due to challenges of sanitary heath materials to come back,”.