Escaping Poverty

Abstract

In Malawi the youths are called the leaders of tomorrow. However, the youths are living in a context of poverty, with little access to education or other forms of live improving tools. In this research, more attention is paid to the debate on how poverty should defined, and how development can be facilitated. By showing this interrelation through the eyes of Malawian students in the age of 18-30, we hope to emphasize the importance of anthropological research in the field of development studies. This complementary research tries to answer the question: ‘How do poverty and development correlate with each other in the lives of Malawian adolescents who are following education at a vocational school in Malawi?’ Our main findings are that the youths are using education as an instrument to stimulate development, since that is the only mean they have access to in order to change their situation in a surrounding of mistrust of the government and corruption. Other means to create development are hard to access because of this harsh environment. Besides, poverty is kept alive by social relationships that determine the access to strategies that help to escape poverty.