Educating Parents in Malawi: the key to happy children? Analyzing the Parenting Challenge of Help a Child in Malawi regarding children’s nutrition, health, play and protection

Abstract

Raising a child in poverty is a difficult task. In order to improve child well-being, Help a Child has developed the Parenting Challenge, a program that educates and supports parents in parenting tasks. Current research examines the effects of the program in Malawi on the topics of child nutrition, health, play and protection. Interviews and focus group discussions among140 parents and 17 children were conducted. Results show positive effects of the Parenting Challenge. Participants report beneficial changes in behavior on the nutrition, health, play and protection of their children. The effective elements of the Parenting Challenges are getting parents together to share problems and ideas through which they experience social support, and providing them with essential information on child rearing. These findings support previous studies arguing parenting education is effective in changing parental behavior and improving child well-being. Future research should focus on the effectiveness of the program within other localities and expand on the experiences of children of participants.