Our child protection warriors...

Respecting each child’s right to education and protection are core values of Impact Network. So as we reflect back on the year, we would like to highlight Caroline Chibale, one of our child protection warriors.

Caroline Chibale is the School Support Manager (SSM) who ensures learners have a safe and supportive environment. Caroline has worked for Impact Network for more than 5 years. She first joined Impact Network as a teacher. Her dedication and proactiveness towards work have led to her professional growth and promotion within the organisation. In 2019, Caroline was promoted to her position where she leads the implementation of our child protection policy, managing cases of early marriage, teen pregnancy, and defilement. She has also helped to develop and deliver a number of workshops and trainings on child protection for all our staff. As part of her role, Caroline routinely coordinates with different stakeholders such as parents, headmen/women, police, and the district social welfare department.

We asked Caroline what she is most proud of achieving in her child protection role and she highlighted two cases that for her stand out. “My greatest achievement in this position was when I managed to convince a pregnant girl to sit for her grade 7 exams. The other achievement was on a defilement case where I was able to take a learner for a medical checkup and medication immediately after learning about the incident. These two cases make me so much happy because I believe my help made a big difference in their lives.”

We are so fortunate to have Caroline on our team and we’re proud of the work she does. Having a safe learning environment is vital as it improves learner’s engagement, attendance and overall success – and Caroline helps make that a reality for our thousands of students, especially girls.

We are especially pleased to announce that Caroline was recently joined by Debora Chisala who will lead this work in Sinda, Petauke and Lusangazi schools. Welcome to the team Debora! We are certain she too, will have a positive effect on the lives of Impact students.

On a personal note, I have had the great privilege of getting to know Caroline more over the years. My favorite memory of her happened in 2019, as she was hosting me and a group of donors. She asked about how my kids were doing, and then said to me that she wasn’t interested in having kids now because she “had to focus on building our education empire.” It made me laugh, but true to her word, she has grown so much with Impact Network and always makes me proud.