The Child Friendly Communities initiative in Malawi is set to launch in two districts in the second quarter of 2021. The initiative is implemented together with the Ministry of Local Government which provides overall guidance on the implementation of the initiative at the local level. The initiative is informed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the national strategy for children.

The initiative is building up on the situation analysis that has been conducted in the two districts of Nsanje and Chikwawa. The situation analysis is feeding into the district development planning processes that are aimed at addressing the challenges that children are facing in the communities, using a wide range of different interventions from planning and budgeting to data collection, community empowerment, capacity building, awareness raising and advocacy, cross-sectoral collaboration, and child-friendly policies. UNICEF programming is designed to respond to the gaps identified through the district development planning process.