Apart from being able to take care of her family, she has now managed to build a burnt-brick house, bought a bicycle, a goat and some chickens.
Every work day she purchases one basketful of tomatoes at MK3000.00 and resells them at MK9000.00 at the Mchinji town market.
When she enrolled in the social cash transfer programme, Phiri used the cash to start a tomato business.
Phiri lives in Lukas Village, in the Traditional Authority Mlonyeni, Mchinji Disitrict, 150 kilometres west of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe.
She is one of the beneficiaries of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Mchinji District.
Her next step, she says, is to buy iron sheets to roof her house so that she no longer has to fetch grass for thatching her house every year.
Phiri is on Antiretroviral Treatment and when she gets the cash transfers or money from her tomato business, she can afford to travel to hospital for free treatment.
