For the cost of a meal out you could provide school meals for a child in rural Malawi for a year, making a huge difference to their attendance and ability to concentrate in school. It costs £12 per year to provide a child like Noah from a poor area at Namende, 10km from the tarmac road, with school meals for a year. We’ve just set up a new campaign at virgin giving to make donating and fundraising so much easier.  Please consider doing a fundraising event so your friends can also support these fantastic children. Thank you
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fund/Hope4MalawiNamendeFP

Welcome to our Spring newsletter. It has been another exciting few months for Hope4Malawi, starting new a new solar lamp projects, developing existing projects and opening the classroom block at Chipwepwete. We are thankful to the rural communities in Malawi for their input and hard work and are grateful for your commitment and support.  We hope you enjoy reading about the impact your support is having on children and communities in rural Malawi  Hope4Malawi Newsletter Spring 2019

It is such a delight to be able to bless these two girls at Chipwepwete. We had two bars of soap left after an afternoon MyGirl session with the teenagers so it was a pleasure to be able to give them to these two beautiful girls

You can give to the the relief and rebuilding efforts in Malawi here: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/hope4malawifloodrelief/489898. Thank you for your generosity.

Many people have asked how the cyclone has affected the area where Hope4Malawi works in Malawi.  Thank you for your concern.  We were in Malawi as the cyclone was moving it’s way across Mozambique.  It was a worrying time for everyone as the week before we had experienced torrential rain for 4 full days, which had caused widespread flooding in Malawi.

Malawi suffered the approach effects of the cyclone but was spared the additional devastation of the cyclone landfall which fell on Mozambique.

We know of several people who sadly lost their lives including a local primary education inspector and the mother and father in law of the librarian at Chipwepwete school.  Homes were destroyed or damaged and the floods have left water contaminated and crops destroyed.  Hundreds have lost their livelihoods.  In the valley south of where we work, most districts have lost their crops and thousands of people have fled their homes. There is a high risk of disease as hundreds of water points are damaged and water contaminated.

Our partner, Fisherman’s Rest, is partnering with Medecins Sans Frontieres to repair boreholes.  They started this work today.  80 water points have been identified in one region which need to be fixed.  Fisherman’s Rest will also provide maize and help communities return to their villages.  They will then help staff and people local to Fisherman’s rest to rebuild their houses.

There are several relief organisations working in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe which need our support.  However, if you would like to support the relief and rebuilding work which Fisherman’s Rest are undertaking in Malawi you can donate here through Hope4Malawi. 100% of your donation will be used for the relief and rebuilding work in Malawi.

https://mydonate.bt.com/events/hope4malawifloodrelief/489898

Thank you for your generosity.

On Friday 15th March, the whole school community at Chipwepwete including Pupils, teachers, Chiefs and education advisers joined together to celebrate the opening of the new classroom block at Chipwepwete.  Three new classrooms, complete with desks, will enable standards 4, 5 and 6 to now have lessons under cover and withe proper desks and chairs.  This is a far more conducive environment for learning than the open air classrooms with the children sitting on stones!

The school community were thrilled: there was singing and dancing, speeches, drama, poems written by three of the pupils and gratitude filled the air.

Children at Chipwepwete and Mpemba don’t have electricity at school or at home.  When they finish school in the afternoon they do chores at home including fetching water and wood, helping in the the maize fields and cooking.  There is very little time to read or study before the sun goes down at 6pm.  After that they have no light to see to read or study.

That’s why Hope4Malawi, along with our partners St Paul’s Howell Hill and Trinity School, Croydon have provided solar lamps for the school libraries so that children can borrow a lamp when they borrow a book .  The children in standard 8 were particularly excited as they have their end of school exams in May and are keen to work in the evenings.  These exams will determine whether they have a place at secondary school.

Since 2013 Hope4Malawi has been one of the local charities which Epsom Book Fair support with the proceeds from the fair, one of the biggest book fairs in the UK.  Each year volunteers from the charity sort books before the fair starts.  Over 50,000 books have been sorted into categories in the last few days, ready to be sold next week at the book fair.  Hope4Malawi will receive part of the proceeds from the fair which will provide school lunches for children at one of our partner schools in Southern Malawi. Thank you to all our volunteers who helped sort books this week.

Seaton House Primary School in Sutton has raised sufficient funds for 25 children at Namende School in Malawi to have school lunches this year:  The mug of porridge which the children at Namende receive each day helps them to stay healthy and concentrate in class.  Since the launch of the feeding programme in September school attendance has increased dramatically. This week we heard in assembly at Seaton House about the stark difference between life growing up in Sutton and growing up in Malawi.

Thank you Seaton House

Welcome to our Christmas newsletter. It has been another exciting year for Hope4Malawi, starting new projects and developing existing ones. We are thankful to the rural communities in Malawi for their input and hard work and are grateful for your commitment and support.  We hope you enjoy reading about the impact your support is having on children and communities in rural Malawi  Hope4Malawi Newsletter Autumn 2018 

Each summer we take a team of people to Malawi to work on Hope4Malawi projects and projects run by one of our partners, Fisherman’s Rest.  These include schools work, forestry work, clinic visits, involvement in the water programme, MyGirl, feeding programmes, or bible teaching.  If you would like to go to Malawi either as part of a Hope4Malawi team, as a family, individual or with your own group, please be in touch.  There is plenty to get involved with using the skills that you already have, as part of ongoing sustainable projects, in a beautiful setting.

David Kellett has returned from a  two week trip to Malawi this autumn. Here is his report:

‘For two weeks in September I was in rural southern Malawi with a team from Hope4Malawi. We had an amazing time and crammed a lot into the 2 weeks. Here are some highlights:
We launched a feeding programme in a very poor village which means the primary school children will now get a hot meal of maize porridge every day. This has a positive impact on their attendance and educational attainment. It might be the only meal some of them have all day.

It was exciting to encourage secondary school students and pupils transferring from primary education. These are children who are sponsored by people from the UK as school fees are beyond the means of many poor. I met one talented young man who lives in a hut with a grass roof and dirt floor – but who can now go to a very good school, which will hugely improve his life chances.

It was a major step forward to buy a plot of land (which involved drones to draw the plot, and negotiations with village chiefs), so work can now begin on building a secondary school. For the rural poor this will be a very significant life-changing benefit.

I also got to plant mahogany trees and graft mango trees as part of a re-forestation programme. Oh, and we saw an elephant, a leopard and many more animals, as well as getting to enjoy breath-taking starry skies and beautiful sunsets every day.

I developed a teaching series on God’s amazing grace, which was one and a half days of teaching which we delivered three times in different villages. So many people came to the programme in one village that we had to abandon the building and teach it outside under the shade of some trees, with a pig and some goats roaming around as we spoke! Hundreds came and responded as God showed His amazing grace. We printed the teaching material in booklets and had it translated so people can continue to use it. The team did drama and craft work with hundreds of children, using this to teach Bible stories about God’s grace. They absolutely loved it -despite our lack of acting talent!

We gave a Sunday service in a prison and provided a rice, boiled egg and relish lunch which we served to the 500 prisoners. Their normal meal is a plate of Nsema often with no relish, so this was very welcome.  Thankfully they let us out (it’s not a place you would want to overstay your welcome).

God’s grace was sufficient for us. It was demanding and very busy but a truly amazing time. I can’t wait to go back.

It might be a bit early but when you are planning your next holiday you might want to think about going on a mission trip somewhere instead of to the usual places …