Grace Phiri Mazala, our delegate of the day, comes to us from the Anglican Church of Zambia. We don’t have a picture of her yet, but we’ll share one next week!

Grace Phiri Mazala is the National Program Director of the Zambia Anglican Council, the development arm of the Anglican Church in Zambia. She is responsible for integrating the mission work of the Anglican Church with the Zambian government’s social sector in areas such as gender, health, education, agriculture, literacy, water, and sanitation. Grace also ensures gender is considered in all Anglican Council programs.

When Grace was District Director of Health in a rural district called Lufwanyama, she saw that national and local governmental decisions were being made with little or no involvement of women. “Land acquisition was a nightmare for women. The structural biases in traditional and cultural institutions mostly favored men. Even at the household level women failed even to make a decision to take a sick child to the clinic until the husband made a decision. Lack of information was another constraint.” So she became involved as Chair of the District Planning Committee and was able to advocate effectively for gender in projects and mobilize the women.

Now, with the Zambia Anglican Council’s work in rural and peri-urban areas, Grace partners primarily with women who both implement the programs and benefit from them. “They are involved in planning, implementation and monitoring of the projects. Some are members of project committees. Ours is a close relationship.”