Projects...
Projects for 2012
- Chisala sports centre with football pitch, netball & volleyball courts at the school. Annual sports day very popular
- Secondary school bursary scheme - a separate bank account has been set up to deal only with the scheme for all sites
- Teacher training at Chisala. Is successful this will be an annual training.
- IT Centre at both sites. This involves mainly upgrading existing structures and getting more equipment and training
- Feeding programme through a volunteer at Chisala and Chikangawa Primary schools
- Local groups- developing the women and youth groups in both sites
- Theatre/creative arts scheme in both sites
- Tree replanting project to help combat the serious deforestation programme
- Building projects could include a teacher's house or a community hall and more pit-latrines at Chisala. Chikangawa have requested girls' hostels. These depend on funding.
- Girl's hostels project - if successful at Chikangawa, then we will look to help Mzenga Secondary School
Volunteers
The house at Kawalazi Tea Estate is a beautiful, old colonial style building with full running water and electricity donated by the Estate for volunteers. We need volunteers over the age of 21 to come and impart a skill to the communities! See volunteers' comments on our Home and Gallery pages. They are happy to chat to you about their experiences!
Please contact Tanya for more information.
Build Malawi Project
The Build Malawi Project is now under Expand and has continued to be our main focus for this year in the area of Chisala, Nkhata Bay District, Northern Malawi. We have many projects in the pipeline, some of which have funding already, but most of the building projects we are still trying to raise funding for.
Chisala School finished its main building in December 2008 and celebrated by having a big inauguration ceremony with the British High Commissioner as our Guest of Honour. It was the culmination of 3 years of hard work by the BMP team and the community, who in turn contributed local resources such as bricks, sand and labour to build the school.
The school has now has over 500 students since its start in January 2008. The current numbers as of December 2011 are:
| STANDARD | GIRLS | BOYS |
| 1 | 35 | 26 |
| 2 | 40 | 41 |
| 3 | 35 | 30 |
| 4 | 37 | 30 |
| 5 | 27 | 38 |
| 6 | 26 | 24 |
| 7 | 13 | 24 |
| 8 | 20 | 21 |
All primary school education is free in Malawi and so all students must be accepted which places enormous stress on understaffed teachers. We will be helping them lesson plan more effectively through IT training courses and donated laptops, as well as teacher training. The IT training will be complete before the end of 2011 and the teacher training will start in August 2012.
High pupil numbers means streaming of standards leading to morning and afternoon lessons, and long working hours for teachers. At present we have six government teachers, quite a high number for a standard government primary school, and one assistant teacher, paid by government, who started out as an unpaid community volunteer teacher - we are very proud of Mr Chirwa!
It is important that new, modern and more interactive techniques are adopted by the teachers to encourage youth to join school, as well as to provide the school with facilities to attract them. A school feeding programme will help with this and encourage pupils to learn for more hours each day. The standard of English is a particular issue and we will be addressing this through teacher training and teaching aids, such as radios, DVD's and laptop games.
Promoting the general community!
Chisala school acts as a community centre and so promotes education for all, not just the local primary school kids. We are big on promoting general adult literacy, especially amongst women, in these rural communities. Our library helps with this and is used by all kinds of community members for a number of activities, from reading to watching the news on Malawi TV and grasping a little bit of Malawian current affairs.
Through volunteer, Howard Brewer, Expand helped construct some more classrooms and toilets for nearby Chisasa school (around 6km away). Pictures are up in the gallery page.
Expand is also helping the nearby health clinic finish its maternity ward and has bought some building materials and plumbing parts to finish the job. Next year, we hope to give the existing clinic a revamp as well as it served hundreds of community members each day, not to mention providing valuable under-5 clinical services to babies and mothers.
It is a very worthy cause and just £10 could buy a bag of cement and ten are needed to complete the maintenance programme there.
Donations and partners
We have been donated many building materials, such as paints, to revamp Chisala school and it is looking beautiful and colourful. We were donated these by Cashbuild, Lilongwe, Steel & Hardware, Mzuzu, and Beehive Community High School from Edinburgh, who visited us for a week through Outlook Expeditions. Thanks to all of you!
Game Lilongwe donated 4 kiddies laptops and Yellobric (www.yellowbric.com) donated 5 kindles for Chisala and our new Chikangawa Secondary school (see below). Our volunteers have donated some used laptops that we are fixing up for use by the school. More are needed!
Expand is expanding!
We are in the process of finalising Expand's first ever Malawian Community Development Officer (CDO) and who will focus on getting the projects at Chisala and Chikangawa into full swing.
We have now expanded into the Mzimba District (2 hours away) and are focusing first on Chikangawa Secondary school. We have donated 3 kindles and are proposing to get some desktop and laptop computers early in 2012 from a local insurance company. We are in dialogue with the local chiefs and community members about their needs and requirements, many of which are basic, like water provision.
Build Malawi Project
The Build Malawi Project will be our main focus for this year and operates in the area of Chisala, Nkhata Bay District, Northern Malawi. The project finished its main building in December 2008 and celebrated by having a big inauguration ceremony with the British High Commissioner as our Guest of Honour. It was the culmination of 3 years of hard work by the BMP team and the community, who in turn contributed local resources such as bricks, sand and labour to build the school.
The school has now had over 500 students since its start in January 2008. As primary school education is free in Malawi, it cannot easily turn potential students away, although measures have been taken to control influx of students to ease the burdens on the understaffed teachers. At present we have six government teachers, a high number for a Malawian primary school.
We also have a volunteer teacher from the local community who has now been accepted as an assistant government teacher, and is on their payroll thanks to the project. We want to start up a teacher training programme in the whole area this year and invite teachers from abroad to share knowledge and teaching methods. It is important that new and more interactive techniques are adopted by the teachers to encourage youth to join school, as well as to provide the school with facilities to attract them.
The school acts as a community centre and so promotes education for all, not just the local primary school kids. We are big on promoting general adult literacy, especially amongst women, in these rural communities. Our library helps with this and is used by all kinds of community members for a number of activities, from reading to watching the news on Malawi TV and grasping a little bit of Malawian current affairs.
In view of all this, we are hoping to get started and complete the following projects over the next 3 years:
- Establishing the sports ground that will have football pitch, netball & volleyball courts (2010)
- Building the sports centre with changing room and shower facilities for boys and girls to promote big sports events in the immediate area (2010)
- Building a volunteers house (2010)
- Building one/two teachers houses (2010-11)
- Building more pit latrines/urinal facilities (2010-11)
- Expanding the library (2011-12)
- Establishing a large school garden and subsequent feeding programme (2011-12)
- Starting an annual teacher training scheme in conjunction with government (2010-12)
- Building a block to promote workshop/practical skills and informal education
- Create an IT skills training centre (2011)
Mzenga Secondary School accommodation facilities
We are currently finalising negotitions with government for the building of accommodation facilities for both girls and boys at Mzenga Secondary School, our nearest secondary school to Chisala which is about 30km away. The big problem with this beautiful school is that there are no residence facilities there that are safe and reliable, and which therefore rules out a large percentage of the nearby school learners reaching it, including Chisala students.
We intend to work again closely with Government to build these facilities to allow Chisala students, amongst many others, to access good quaility secondary education. We aim to start this year and are working closely with the MP and local community to achieve our goal at Mzenga. If this is accomplished, it will become one of the best secondary schools in the District so please show your support for this fabulous project!
Project plans and budgets are available on request.
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