The Teams Archive Collections is a new series of blog posts for 2017. This series explores the different collections held by the Archive, and sheds some light on the life of Teams.
For those who don’t already know, I am solely responsible for the creation of the Teams of Our Lady Transatlantic Super-Regional Archive, a digital archive, comprised of documents and images collated over the last 60 years. (For information about Teams of Our Lady, please visit the links at the bottom of the page).
Teams in Malawi
‘Teams came to Malawi when a parishioner read about Teams in the English weekly Catholic Newspaper – The Tablet – and decided it would be very good for couples in Malawi. A couple in South-East England, Peter and Anna Chandler took the role of piloting the first team by post, and remained in touch with the couples in the first team by post and email for many years afterwards, until Peter died.
Malawi is in the Southern part of Africa, bordering Mozambique and Zambia, and was the former British colony of Nyasaland. As such, the official language is English, although many people in the outlying villages speak only Chechewa. Teams started in Zomba, in the southern half of Malawi, and quickly spread to other parts of the country, so that it is established now in 4 dioceses’.
(Antony and Janet Denman, Northampton St. Thomas Team).
The Malawi Collection
The collection involves material on the development of Malawi within Teams, primarily consisting of financial information and a range of progress reports. As a third world country, Malawi is very poor, so Teams in Malawi is funded primarily by the Transatlantic Super-Region, of which they are a part, and grants from the International Leading Team.
The collection has been catalogued and digitised in its entirety, according to ISAD-G, the International Standard for Archival Description and has been arranged into 4 series:
- Financial records
- Historical records
- Literature
- Reports
These records are mostly in English, although there are also some prayer cards in Chichewa, the most widely known language of Malawi. The archive would welcome the opportunity to expand the Malawi collection, and can be contacted by e-mail: archivist@teams-transatlantic.net.
Contact the blog: learningaboutarchives@gmail.com
Links:
Young Teams of Our Lady: http://www.ytolinternational.net/home/
Teams GB: http://www.teamsgb.org.uk
Teams Transatlantic: http://teams-transatlantic.net
Equipes Notre-Dame: http://www.equipes-notre-dame.com/en/
Sophie Archives 