I wrote a few weeks ago about the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi and that we had offered to sponsor some of the children so that they can go to School. Well I’m very pleased that today we’ve agreed to support 10 children to go to school including covering the costs of their school uniforms, text books and extra tuition.

I’ll post updates on how this progresses later in the year.

The cost for each childs school fee is an average of £21 a year! Not a lot to us but if you consider that the average wage in Malawi is about 80 pence a day (£24 month) then relatively thats a very large amount and for children without parents there may be nobody to provide any kind of financial assistance.

We’d like to support more children in the future so we’re on the look out for any kinds of donations towards this. All money donated will be used directly for the work of the Grace Project - if you’d like to make a donation send us an email to info@yomo.co.uk

Update:

I’ve set up a group on facebook: “I’ll give up 1 thing to help a child in Malawi go to School for a Year”

Something that really affects you when you’re out there is that you eat in a restaurant - a meal that is very average by our standards - but you think all of the time that the food you leave is much more than the children you’ve been with will get to eat. So the idea of the group is to give up something for a short period of time - it can be a luxury - chocolate, expensive drinks & so on, but give it up for a short time and put the money you would have spent to one side and then send it over to us and we’ll make sure its used to support the children involved in the Grace project. Its a small gesture but I can’t emphasise enough that its something that will make a very big difference - its a very simple way of investing in people to help themselves. If you’re not on facebook you can still do it anyway!

Some more interviews with children involved with the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi. Mussa (12) and Simple (13) are two of the nicest young people I’ve ever met - if they were in this country we’d have jumped at the chance to get them volunteering with us. As it is its probably more worthwhile that they’re talents are put to use to help the Grace project develop - lets hope they get the opportunities they will need to develop their education and stay involved….

Fenny is one of the children involved with the Grace Orphan Project and is the first of the children who kindly agreed to do an interview with us last month.

Having been up all night mostly cursing our DVD copying faclities I decided to take the day off today which gave me chance to finish off the report we promised to provide the Grace Orphan & Disabled Care Group in Malawi following our recent visit out to them.

While out there we did a series of film interviews with some of the children which we’ll try & get online soon. These along with some of the group development training and general activity days helped us to get a much deeper understanding of both the children and the group than we gained last year.

The group itself is now meeting on its own land which has been fenced off. This is a huge step forward from last year when the group were meeting under a tree next to somebodys house! They still have a long way to go though and much like the name of their Manager they need to travel step by step’ (Ernest Pondeponde is the Manager - ponde ponde means step by step!), (the neighboring town is called Pondebwino - step carefully!).

Just like any community group in the UK the group has a committee, and much like Continue Reading »

On Saturday some of us return to Malawi - this time we’ll be spending three weeks in Zomba - returning on New Years Eve.

So its time to take my first Malaria Tablet and it’s time to get our kit packed. Heres a list of the various stuff we’ll be taking with us…..

First Aid Kits: We have two of these. One with clean syringes and several sets of latex gloves + an Aspivenin kit (a thing that sucks outbites & stings - its only been used once and that was for some unknown thing that took a liking to my foot!). This is the ’serious’ kit that hopefully doesn’t get used.

The second kit is more ‘normal’ albeit with some additions. The normal stuff includes Continue Reading »

I posted a couple of films on the YoMo Network showing Hans Roslings statistics programme about the development of the third world.

Heres his follow up to those with the theme’ the seemingly impossible is possible’ (and randomly some sword swallowing!).

He has some very interesting arguments. Namely that Africa is developing but its naturally far behind the ‘developed world’ (ie. you can’t just throw a load of money at it and expect everything to be ok), and that every rich country became rich by increasing Continue Reading »

At 4:15am earlier last week we finally finished the film from our last visit to Malawi (in December & January). Originally we’d planned to have this done by Easter!! But a year of complete madness meant that never happened but finally its in a viewable format.

We showed it at the Practical Ideas for Participation event on Thursday evening - if you didn’t attend or fancy seeing it again here it is. Continue Reading »

We traveled to Malawi intending to use a similar model to the one we’d used in Tanzania - working with an International School to do work with children from local schools. This time though we wanted to be a bit more adventurous with our training!

We started by doing some group development activities with children from the International School. One of the biggest challenges here was that Malawian culture still has a very traditional approach to men & women. When we got onto talking about leadership and asked a group to decide upon a leader, I asked them why they’d decided on their leader - what qualities did this person have? “Well he’s a boy” came the ‘obvious’ answer along with an obvious kind of shrug!! (This despite the fact that Continue Reading »