Improving school infrastructure
Providing a decent education for the children of Malawi is critical and lack of formal education is still a problem for many people in the country. It has been estimated that up to 70% of women and 30% of men in the country leave school without basic skills in literacy. Although primary school education is now free, school buildings are often run-down and under-equiped creating a poor environment for learning. The Shanti Trust has been supporting and investing in local education since 1992. Our greatest success to date has been in securing funding from the World Bank to build a new and bigger school with improved classrooms and facilities. More recently we have secured long-term sponsorship from a group of Swedish philanthropists which has allowed us to build accommodation for teachers and connect the school with an electricity supply.

With a huge number of students maintenance and development of facilities at the school is expensive. Recent donations have allowed us to begin our first upgrade of the school classrooms and we've been able to paint them with vibrant colours and murals that help to enhance learning. We are currently seeking funds to continue this process, to build an enlarged ablutions block and to provide additional educational materials.

We have recently painted all the school classrooms blue, yellow, green or pink at the local school as well as redecorating the ablution block. The pictures show one of the rooms before (left) and after (right) being painted. Local artists have also added murals to some of the rooms.

Many children are still denied access to school due the need for parents to provide stationary and uniforms. We have received donations to assist local people with this in the past and all help is very gratefully received. Recently one of our supporters supplied us with football strips for the school team through the charity Kit Aid.

Back to top

Supporting teachers

Malawi is a very densely populated country and the ratio of pupils to teachers is very high (estimated to be about 70:1 in 2005). One of our supporters has been helping, through the UN, towards paying the salaries of an additional 4 teachers. Without the extra staff we would have only 8 teachers at the school for over 800 pupils!! With the generous help of our supporters Roger Munyard and Sarah McLeod, we were able to purchase a computer and printer for the school. Support from the Glasgow-based Lord Provost's Malawi Fund means another six computers are on route. We are currently training the teachers and some of the children in IT skills and hope to expand this project soon.

Back to top

Children's food forest
Providing an adequate and balanced diet is a major problem for many local families and children who go to school hungry cannot learn well. Investment in education about nutrition and agriculture is essential in breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition as well as the problems such as limitations in farming practice and deforestation. Our main target for the coming year is to introduce a permaculture garden to the school both to educate the children and their parents in novel agricultural techniques but also to provide the basis for supporting free school meals. We will be modelling our gardens on a successful venture in Zimbabwe called "Children's Food Forest". Starting with young children and involving teachers and parents in creating these learning gardens at the school, we hope what they learn will be replicated by the families at home.

After a few months of trial and error we got a borehole sunk at the school (left) and have now started growing plants and trees. We had a few set backs, the biggest being the borehole got struck by lightening!! Already the children are able to eat some of the products that they are growing like green beans, tomatoes and spinach.

Students will get the opportunity to learn to grow, tend, harvest and prepare nutritious vegetables and fruit. The experience promotes the environmental, social and physical well being of the school community and fosters a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us. We have progressed well and so far have planted over 300 fruit trees around the school. Two of our volunteers have done a great job assisting with planting and training people on looking after the trees. We also have set up a nursery for the schools plants and so are about to start planting vegetables and herbs as well.

Back to top

Caring for orphans
The AIDS epidemic in Malawi is an enormous problem and it is estimated that up to XX% of the population may be infected. In many families there is an entire generation missing and granparents and other relatives often struggle to cope with looking after the children of those who have died. We have been supporting an orphan feeding programme for a number years and are currently expanding our efforts in this area.

A group of ladies from the community have decided to help and have been running their food programme for 3 years providing the under 5’s a meal every day and the under 12’s once a week. Sometimes it is very hard for them to get enough money to feed the children a full meal and we would like to increase the amount of support we can give them.

One of our supporters, Charlie Webb, raised money in UK and came out in February 2008 spending 6 weeks building an orphan day care centre for under 5’s. We are hoping to continue helping towards the day care centre as it already has 50 children under five and 150 between 5 and 12. In time we are hoping to be able to put up some accommodation so the orphans can live at the centre.

Back to top

Community health promotion
Volunteer Elaine spent five weeks working with the ladies in the village sharing her knowledge and experience with them. The ladies attended class once per week to learn and talk about their experiences of topics such as first aid, hygiene, malaria, HIV and other womens issues. Each group had a team leader who could speak and write English.

Many of the women were not given the chance to be educated while they were young therefore it was invaluable to have someone spend time with them to talk through how to deal with simple burns and cuts, how to prevent catching malaria, safe sex practises and other issues such as cystitis and thrush that are not normally spoken about

The last week was spent doing more practical things. Elaine spent time with the ladies in the village observing their eating and cooking habits. Following this she led a cooking demonstration and showed them how to cook other simple meals using cheap and easily accessible ingredients.

Much of the cooking is done on an open fire. The ladies use a lot of wood and miss out on being able to cook many meals using only this method. Few ladies had an oven despite it being an easy and cheap thing to build. Along with Fan, one of the team leaders she built an oven and demonstrated to them how simple it was to construct this themselves.

There are many other areas that could be covered with the ladies; increasing the variety and amount of vegetables that they grow, starting up their own small businesses, for example building their own oven and baking banana loaf….there are some ladies who make donuts on their open fires and sell them for K5 – this could be done with other products.

To the right Fan’s husband and neighbour (who has her own oven) showing off their handiwork at the oven building demonstration. To the left Elaine and Matt cooking scrambled eggs and sweet potato patties for 50 ladies!!

Back to top

Supporting training and micro-enterprise
The Shanti Trust aims to support people to get skills and knowledge to better themselves and develop their community. With assistance from our donors we have been able to support a number of individuals and groups. A recent success story is the Mbula Pot group. This group of ladies began training to build "Mbula pots" in 2008 and are flying ahead with their project. Mbula pots are clay cook-stoves built to a design created by Ripple Africa and will be sold by the ladies' group to the community. The pots use less firewood than the small open fire people curretly cook on and so benef the community and the environment.

Tourism is an important source of foreign revenue for Malawi and huge opportunities exist for local people to take advantage of this growing sector. Access to skills and training is however a constant problem. When we were approached by a group of ladies who wanted to learn massage we were able to send one of them to train in Zambia. Once she is more confident she will begin teaching the other ladies. The course was not cheap and will be paid back once the ladies are able to start earning money. These sorts of project are important to the ladies in the village as it is giving them the chance to be independent and earning their own money. Makuzi Beach has assisted the ladies by giving them a room to work from and by providing oils and a massage table. Our donors Sue and Doug Cowley have also sponsored school leavers to do correspondence courses through Cambridge International College. When we got in touch the CIC Vice principle agreed to sponsor a second pupil! Both pupils decided to study Hotel Management and will be able to complete their practical training at Makuzi.

Back to top