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The Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity (SHARE) supported the Writing and Publication Workshop for academic members of staff at The Polytechnic. The workshop was held from 26th to 29th March, 2018. In total, eighteen academicians submitted their draft manuscripts and attended the workshop. The workshop was supported by 8 facilitators including external lead facilitator, Dr. Paul Nampala from Uganda. The workshop was a key platform for research capacity building for The Polytechnic, and contributed to the development of a new cadre of scholars who have been motivated to engage in writing and publishing. The draft manuscripts which participants were working on are expected to be submitted to various journals by the end of April, 2018.

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From 13th to 19th November 2016, the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) conducted the Science Writing Capacity Development Workshop in the Lake Kariba lakeshore District of Siyavonga, Zambia. The workshop which was fully sponsored by CIDRZ through Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity (SHARE) and ViiV HealthCare grants brought together academicians, researchers and postgraduate students from Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya. The participants were oriented on various research skills such as Scientific Literature, Hypothesis Setting, Medium of Publication, understanding qualitative and quantitative data, surving peer review, meeting the journal editor and review of published paper.

Meeting the Facilitators
The workshop was run by well experienced researchers and regular publishers which included Dr. Roma Chilengi, Dr. Angali Sharma, Dr. Joseph Mutale, Dr. Michael Vinikoor and Dr. Samuel Bosomprah. With the one to one approach, all participants were intensively drilled on how to publish a peer reviewed article where all sections of an article (i.e. abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion) were facilitated within the 5 days of the training.
What was more exciting was that each participant was assigned to a facilitator (mentor) who provided individual needed skills as the participants wrote their individual papers. Kondwani Chidziwisano from Malawi was working on a paper with the title Microbiological quality of drinking water sources in selected rural flood-prone communities of Chikwawa and Nsanje districts, Southern Malawi.

Meeting the BMJ Journal editor
On the 4th day of the workshop, the participants had an opportunity of interacting with a journal editor from British Medical Journal (BMJ). Through skype call, the editor clearly presented on How to write a paper that editors would want to publish. Her presentation highlighted on key points about writing and what editors look for in a paper.
All in all, it was an exciting opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds and share various research skills and experiences. The workshop inspired many of us to contribute to the body of knowledge through scientific writing.
 

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As the floating toilet challenge continues, four teams have been merged into two. The two teams together with their mentors and Staff from Phalombe District Health Office visited Lake Chilwa to gain more insight into the challenge they have to address. The teams met local fishermen and “fished” out information to feed into their designs. The information included current knowledge, attitudes and practices as regards WASH, potential number of users for the toilets, availability of local materials for construction and current bye laws regarding fishing.

Details

Six teams from The Polytechnic, University of Livingstonia, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) and Sustainable Environmental Management Solutions were invited to present their Floating Toilet designs on 22nd January 2018 at the Polytechnic. The assessment panel included Dr. T. Mkandawire (Associate Professor in Civil Engineering and Dean of Engineering), Dr. C. Kambala (Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health), Mr. T. Kaitane (Chief of Party-Plan Malawi), Mr. Kingsley Lungu (Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health) and Mr. C. Jella (District Environmental Health Officer). The top four teams from the Polytechnic and LUANAR were merged to increase the skills set available for tackling the challenge.

Each team has been assigned mentors and will visit Lake Chilwa on 16th February in order to survey the area before refining their designs. The panel was very impressed with the creativity, quality and quantity of input in the designs for the teams. Congratulations to all the competing teams and to the four teams continuing with the work!

Details

After successful application for the PASGAR research methods seminar, on 6th November travelled to Kenya where he attended two seminars, the Design of Social Inquiry and the Case study workshop. The workshops ended on the 24th November and he came back on 25th November, 2015. The seminar was supported by SHARE from the research fellowship fund.

The first part on Design of Social Inquiry started from 8th to 18th November and covered courses including critical imagination, Causal notions and Mechanism, understanding causality, Causality, time, space and causal analysis, research questions and assumptions, concepts, typology, the engaged researcher, policy engagement, message box, mapping policy actors, multi method research and data analysis in multimethod research. The second part was covered from 20th to 23rd November, 2017 and was on Comparative Case Analysis (CCA).  The course covered topics including introduction to comparative case analysis, causation, designs and analysis of cases.

Contact information

The University of Malawi, The Polytechnic
Chichiri, Blantyre 3.
Malawi

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Phone: (+265)1 870 411