• Photograph by Flickr user Lars Plougmann and used under a creative commons license. •

Manes Feston is a Malayan mother who recently gave birth to triplets. Unfortunately, only her one son Feston survived but his siblings died shortly after she gave birth to them in a bush next to the road.

It was winter and Manes and her husband were far away from the next hospital. Moreover, they were a desperately poor family and therefore, they couldn’t afford extra blankets to keep the children warm and safe.

Manes and her family are not the only ones who are exposed to this cruel reality of life. The majority of the population is desperate for finding work and earning some money and that’s why many people end up in the informal economy or as seasonal workers. Given that in this small country in the Southern Africa region, social safety nets which provide health insurance, unemployment payments and financial support don’t exist for this invisible part of the economy, these people don’t have a choice but to watch their children die.

However, there is still hope. Several non-governmental organizations focus on the support of poor families in Africa by providing food and health supplies or financial aid. Furthermore, several aid programs came into being in order to deliver financial assistance and social support like the Decent Work Country Program in August 2011.

But can those independent and mostly voluntary non-profit organizations (NGOs) really help in eliminating these problems of the poorest of the poor in Malawi?