News: September 2005 - Education and Health

EDUCATION AND HEALTH

Three New Nursery Schools in the Mwaya Area

CPAR (Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief), a Canadian NGO, is promoting nursery school education in the area, and three nursery schools have started around Mwaya. Currently, two of the nursery schools are based in private houses and one in a church, and each school has about 45 children aged between two and five years. The teachers are unpaid and untrained volunteers who are trying their best with no resources. RIPPLE Africa has provided blackboards, and pays for tea and sugar for the children. It is hoped that these children will learn the basics (numbers, the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, etc.) which will give them a head start when they reach primary school. We would like to recruit some overseas volunteers who will be able to help train the teachers and teach the children, and provide additional resource materials. We really need to raise some additional sponsorship to pay the wages of the six volunteer teachers at these three nursery schools at a rate of £15 a month each (totalling £90 per month for all six teachers).

Mary with some of the pupils at the nursery school at Kachere

Under 5s Clinic and Nursery School at Kachere

The Under 5s Clinic and Nursery School building at Kachere, which has been funded by a previous volunteer, Karen, is now operational, and Mary Gondwe is doing an excellent job teaching the children. The level of education of the five year olds is far better than the children in Standard 1 at Mwaya primary school. The wages for Mary and her assistant (also called Mary!) are being paid by Karen as well.

Primary School Teacher Training

We were very lucky to have a volunteer from Germany, Ulrike, who is a trained primary school teacher. She initiated a twice-weekly teacher training programme for the five primary school teachers and six trainee teachers. She tried to encourage the teachers to make education fun and interesting. She strongly believed that the children needed a good start by learning the basics thoroughly. Without a good grounding in maths and English, the less able children always struggle to keep up especially with the large class sizes.

Primary School End-of-Term Prize-Giving Ceremony

On our visit in July, there was a prize-giving ceremony organised by Timothy, the headmaster, and his fellow teachers. The students were given small prizes and certificates, donated by Akeley Wood School, Buckingham, and Josca's Preparatory School, Abingdon, to celebrate their achievements.

Secondary School Sponsorship Programme

RIPPLE Africa sponsors the top 10 to 15 students from Standard 8 to attend secondary school. Some of our previous volunteers are individually sponsoring certain students to go to expensive (by Malawian standards) private boarding secondary schools. Although this is an excellent opportunity, we are finding that volunteers are being pestered to sponsor individuals, and this is creating a certain amount of jealousy. We would like to promote sponsorship to top schools, like Viphya for boys and Tukombo for girls, but on the basis of achievement. Depending on the amount of money we raise for the secondary school sponsorship fund, we would like to send the top one, two or three students to these schools. Therefore, we are looking for sponsors to pay all or part of these fees which work out at a total of £350 per year per student for four years.

Rael, top of the class in Standard 8. He is very bright and will probably be one of the students for whom we're trying to raise money so that we'll be able to send him to one of the top secondary schools next year

Donations from ‘Down Under’

Mwaya is such a special place that, once you have been there, you will never forget it. Louise, an Australian, visited Mwaya as a tourist in 1996 and, about two years ago, decided to help the local children at Mwaya primary school. She organised an appeal to raise donations of books, games, writing materials, football boots, sports clothing, etc., from individuals and businesses in and around their area. But it didn't stop there. Lou and her parents, John and Chris, also wanted to be at Mwaya when the shipment of 120 boxes arrived so that they could be a part of organising with the school how the donated goods could be used and distributed. Their visit coincided with our trip in August, and we all had enormous fun opening the crates and sorting through the items. A huge THANK YOU to Lou, John and Chris, and everyone involved in the appeal, together with all those who donated goods and money.

John, Chris and Louise with some members of the school football and netball teams in their new kits

Louise, Donncha, Jane and John unpacking some of the boxes from Australia

New Community Library

The local people of Mwaya have been very lucky because three girls from Stowe School in England have raised the money to build a community library close to the primary school. The three girls, Georgina, Christina and Leila, visited Malawi in July to see Mwaya for themselves and experience life there. They were involved in cataloguing some of the books, teaching some of the students, and even tried their hand at plastering the walls at the library. This project was made possible when the three girls won the Myles Henry award in a close contest. This award is given annually by the Myles Henry family to 6th form students at Stowe School.

Quite by accident, one of our current volunteers, Donncha, is a librarian in Dublin, Eire. Together with Mr Longwe, the appointed librarian, he is now in charge of setting up the library system and will be responsible for opening the library which we hope will happen in October.

Leila, Christina and Georgina with Frank, the builder, and some of the children who will benefit from the new community library

Donncha, a volunteer from Eire, is a librarian and has been helping to catalogue the books for the library

Paul and Amy’s Sponsored Cycle Ride to Land’s End, Cornwall, and Leg Wax!!

Some of our volunteers really come up with some great ideas for fundraising. Paul and Amy decided to do a sponsored bicycle ride from Sheffield to Land's End, a distance of 408 miles. On the surface, this seems a normal fundraising activity but Paul decided to something a little different - he also waxed his legs! They raised about £2000 in total to go towards the cost of rebuilding the double classroom block at Mwaya primary school. To read all about it in more detail, click here.

'Nurse' Amy getting everything ready for Paul's leg wax!

Kachere Health Centre

Kachere Health Centre has been limping along without a permanent nurse/midwife for over 12 months. We reported the much publicised shortage of nurses and doctors in Malawi in our last Newsletter and, although RIPPLE Africa renovated the nurse's house, a permanent nurse still has not been found.

The volunteers who have given their services to the clinic in various capacities have greatly assisted Mathias, the medical officer. We have been really lucky to have had two trained Dutch nurses, Anneke and Elly, who really got stuck in from Day One. They worked tirelessly on projects like training TBAs (Traditional Birth Attendants). Many expectant mothers are unable to come to the health centre to have their babies, and the village TBAs are vital to assist with local births. Please click here to find out more about their activities.

			Company Registration No. 04823686 • UK Registered Charity No. 1103256	Contact RIPPLE Africa