Our story began in the community
Wandikweza’s journey began with a simple but urgent question: How do we reach families who are consistently left behind by the health system? What started as a small, community-driven effort has grown into a locally led organization delivering lifesaving care across some of Malawi’s hardest-to-reach communities.
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Founded in 2016 and grounded in deep relationships with rural families, Wandikweza has evolved by listening, learning and adapting, responding to real needs on the ground while strengthening public health systems. Over time, our work has grown in scale and impact, rooted in trust, guided by evidence and shaped by the realities of families living in extreme poverty.
Founder
Mercy Chikhosi Kafotokoza, Founder and Executive Director of Wandikweza, has deep roots in Malawi’s rural communities shaped by the heartbreak of losing her uncle due to a simple tooth infections and years of service as a nurse, midwife and public health professional.
Through her work delivering maternal, newborn and child health services in hard-to-reach areas, Mercy witnessed firsthand how distance, poverty and weak health systems turn preventable conditions into life-threatening emergencies.
In 2016, motivated by these realities, she founded Wandikweza to ensure healthcare reaches women, newborns and children where access is most limited. Under Mercy’s leadership, Wandikweza has grown into a trusted, community-led organization delivering Proactive Doorstep Care through Community Health Workers, Midwives on Wheels and strengthened referral systems across some of Malawi’s most remote districts.
Three principles drive everything we do at Wandikweza
Our Journey: Building Last-Mile Health Systems
A timeline of learning, scale and systems impact
2016: Founded in Community Reality
Wandikweza is founded by a Malawian nurse, rooted in rural communities, with a clear focus on preventing maternal and child deaths among families living furthest from care.
2017–2018: Community Trust & Doorstep Delivery
Early implementation focuses on household-level care, building trust with families, traditional leaders, and frontline health workers. Doorstep care proves effective in reaching mothers and children missed by facility-based services.
2019: Mobile Outreach Clinics Introduced
Wandikweza launches mobile outreach clinics to extend essential maternal and child health services closer to hard-to-reach communities, bridging the gap between home visits and static health facilities.
2020–2021: Nurses on Bikes (NoBs) Launched
To address distance and delays in skilled care, Nurses on Bikes are introduced, bringing professional maternal and newborn services directly into remote communities and strengthening referral pathways.
2022: System Integration, Model Refinement & Opening of Wandikweza Health Centre
Learning from early scale, Wandikweza strengthens supervision, referral coordination and the use of routine data to guide delivery. During this period, Wandikweza Health Centre opens, serving as a clinical anchor for the Proactive Doorstep Care (PDC) model.
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The Health Centre enables stronger referral completion, post-discharge follow-up, and hands-on learning, allowing PDC to mature into a fully integrated system linking households, community outreach, mobile services and facility-based care.
2023: First District Expansion (Mangochi)
Wandikweza expands beyond its initial district, entering Mangochi, marking the first step toward multi-district scale and demonstrating the model’s adaptability across different geographic and system contexts.
2024: Strengthening for Scale
Operational systems are further standardized: training, digital tracking, performance monitoring and facility coordination are reinforced to support responsible growth without compromising quality.
2025: A Proven Last-Mile Health System & Evolution to Midwives on Wheels
PDC operates as a full ecosystem:
CHWs → Midwives on Wheels → Mobile Clinics → Facilities → Home
The model demonstrates reliability, adaptability and cost-effectiveness in high-need, disaster-prone settings.
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During this period, Nurses on Bikes formally evolve into Midwives on Wheels (MoWs), reflecting deeper system alignment and an increased clinical focus on skilled maternal and newborn care within the PDC model.
2026–2030: Scaling with Purpose
Wandikweza scales Proactive Doorstep Care across seven districts, reaching a cumulative 3 million people by 2030, while embedding the model more deeply within government systems and strengthening evidence for national replication.