We couldn’t put it any better than H.E. President Chakwera did when addressing the UK Parliament’s Malawi All-Party Parliamentary Group on July 27th 2021:  

“We are very happy to have friends like Scotland…It is important that the relationships we have established over the years continue to flourish, not just through the diplomats and officials that represent governments but through the interaction of people-to-people links.  This is what we are emphasising: when we come to talk about our relationship with the Scottish people – it is always the people-to-people, nation-to-nation, community-to-community.”

The SMP is committed to continually strengthening its safeguarding systems. During this period, led by our highly experienced Safeguarding Committee, we completely updated our safeguarding and volunteering policies, and strength-tested these in a table-top scenario exercise kindly delivered by Police Scotland. Feedback from Police Scotland and other experts in this area concluded that the SMP had excellent policies and relatively low safeguarding risks. We also developed a refresher Safeguarding training course undertaken jointly with MaSP, delivered by expert Safeguarding Consultant, Philippa Ramsden.

Emerging from Covid and keen to reflect on what we could learn and do better as an organisation, the SMP initiated a listening process – consulting Members, staff, volunteers and Board members, of both the SMP and MaSP.  

There was strong encouragement to maintain highly collaborative and close working practices with mutual support and co-designed and co-hosted events which we have been pursuing since the arrival of Covid. Equally, there was consensus around the value of us continuing to be responsive to the distinctive needs of our respective memberships, as well as to maintain our autonomy and mutual accountability.  The SMP worked particularly closely with MaSP throughout COP26 activities, as shared below.