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….

I mentioned in my previous blog that towards the end of our time in Malawi we were approached by Kondwani Banda who gave us an update on the work he’s been doing to develop the ‘YoMo All Stars’ football team.

Kondwani works as a non teaching member of staff at the International School in Zomba. He befriended us during our first stay in Malawi

when we did some work with children at the International School and from nearby local schools. Since then he’s also assisted us in sourcing a woodcarver for ‘YoMo keyrings’ and more recently some YoMo African Artwork which we use towards fundraising for the work we support out there.

Back in January Kondwani approached us to ask if we would donate a football to enable him to set up a football team. After we returned to the UK he sent us a letter to tell us about the team he had set up called the ‘YoMo Stars’……. “So to the first time, that ball has given me the power to establish the team known as YoMo stars”.

I returned to Malawi on my own in March and asked Kondwani how Continue Reading »