SAFI's History

SAFI began in 2002 as a community-based organization that coordinated food relief assistance in response to the severe famine that hit Malawi in that year. Over time, the founders realized that food relief was not a sustainable solution to food insecurity. Instead, they decided to focus on capacitating households so that they could produce all the food they need. SAFI commenced its operations in 2007 with its first cohort of 30 families. Today, SAFI has trained over 300 families on its campus in Madisi, Dowa district.

SAFI Extension Program

Over the years, demand for SAFI programs grew exponentially. Most farmers expressed interest in the program, but it was not possible to increase intake beyond 40 families per year due to space limitations on the campus. In response to this demand, SAFI established the Children's Brighter Future (CBF) program in 2013. CBF provided a compressed version of the SAFI training program to families who could not come to SAFI due to space limitations. The CBF program was delivered in a modular approach with three modules: backyard gardening, chicken farming, and field crops. CBF reached out to 8759 farm families from Lilongwe, Kasungu, Ntchisi, Dowa, and Mchinji. In 2017, CBF was rebranded to become the SAFI Extension Program.

Educate the Children Program (ETC)

SAFI also established the ETC to provide scholarships to secondary and college-going students. To date, many ETC students have completed secondary school, and several other students have graduated from both public and private colleges with scholarship assistance from this program.

Merger of SAFI, SAFI Extension, and ETC

While remarkable impact was achieved by SAFI Campus, SAFI Extension, and ETC, it was observed that there would be greater synergistic benefits if the three organizations could be merged to operate as one organization. The merger was fully operationalized in December 2021, and the three programs now operate under one roof under the name SAFI.