Over the past forty years, many African countries, including Malawi, have accumulated large quantities of pesticides. The chemicals contain chemical toxins and need to be carefully stored and handled. The unwanted buildup of such products has occurred due to inadequate stock management, non-distribution to farmers, bans on several pesticides, lack of coordination or inappropriate supply from donor agencies, unsuitable packaging and supplier incentive programs. These stocks will continue to present a threat to the environment until there is an increase in community awareness and involvement in eliminating and reducing the impact of persistent organic pollutants in peri-urban environment. The Project directly contributes to enhancing social and environmental sustainability and will contribute to safeguarding natural resources, including land and water and reduce risks to human health in Ndirande, one of the peri-urban areas of Blantyre. Ndirande lies within the surging Ndirande hill terrain and has a total population of 118,429. Most part of Ndirande is a low income area with informal settlements and also forms a large part of catchment area for Blantyre Water Board and has a reserve water dam. The area has no dump site for waste disposal and collection services by the Blantyre City Assembly are usually inefficient hence mushrooming of illegal dump sites. The catchment base is now used illegally by most people for agriculture, where people cultivate maize and other crops. The practice has seen a high increase of over use of chemicals in agricultural activities at the expense of other cleaner production options. The preceding scenarios lead to high level of POPs invading the local markets, vendors and local shops. The containers of the POPs after use are eventually thrown in rivers, dump places, or thrown anyhow, this is a case of health concern to the people and children in particular

The liberation of agricultural sector has seen many activities that involve the handling, use and sale of chemicals. Coupled with the prevalent of massive commodity shortages, total reliance on imports has resulted in many chemicals some of which are labeled with instructions in unfamiliar languages and others are without instructions and no chemical composition as they are purported to have been repackaged to suit the pocket of the consumer. Many chemicals lack instructions on application, formulations and dilutions, interpretation of label information, appropriate application tools and communities lack the necessary personal protective equipment. As a result the situation has created high chances of misuse and mismanagement of chemicals including POPs putting both the environment and people at risk.

3. Project?s Main Objective
The overall aim of the project is to create POPs awareness and build community capacity for POPs management among residents of Ndirande peri-urban area.

4. Implementation Strategy
? Facilitation of activities while emphasizing community empowerment
? Capacity building through training to enhance self reliance
? Stakeholder meetings - Community organization, awareness raising and education
? Community-level action planning and implementation
? Database creation
? Regular monitoring of activities and evaluation of impacts
? Experiential learning and information sharing.
? Study tours and community level workshops and demonstrations

6. Key Project Outcomes
? Enhanced and improved database on POPs
? Improved public awareness system on POPs
? Improved dissemination of lessons and experiences learnt
? Improved access to information on POPs by communities and development workers

7. SUSTAINABILITY OF PROJECT RESULTS
? Promotion of alternative pest management strategies, such as integrated pest management (IPM), supporting general public awareness on pesticide use
? Involvement and training of communities, local markets pesticide merchandisers vendors, local shopkeepers that sell pesticide, local NGOs in pesticide safety and health risks
? An increase in general public awareness of environmental health risks, and public disclosure of pesticide issues and training of pesticide distributors, users, agricultural extension staff and others, as well as an increase in the their capacity to safely and effectively manage pesticides and other chemicals