Without education, children in Malawi can grow up without hope of escaping a life of poverty. With education anything is possible.
Only a fraction of children in Malawi attend secondary school which has to be paid for. Lack of money, more than anything else, holds children back from education, and girls are less likely than boys to be educated at the secondary level.
At any one time, the Fund directly pays the fees of well over 100 children from Gumbi and surrounding villages to enable them to have secondary education.
With less than 1% of college age people attending University it was a triumph when a first pupil from Gumbi village got to study at university. He is now working in the solar sector as well as supporting the Fund, and the Fund is now supporting a strong cohort of about ten young people through university, providing a laptop for each. A good number of students have now graduated.
The Fund has helped with some school building work and also provided solar power at the main local secondary school in Nambuma and solar lamps for students – this has been crucial as there was no electricity in Nambuma until 2021 but there are often power cuts and so solar is still much needed. Gumbi and other villages in the area still haven’t got electricity, and households couldn’t afford to pay a connection fee anyway. Solar lamps allows students to study for more hours, and helps avoid dangerous kerosene lamps. During times of acute hunger the Fund has set up school feeding programmes to encourage children to keep going to school.
From Gumbi being a village with only one book, the Fund partnered with Book Aid, bringing children a wide selection of books and building 3 village libraries together with one at the main local secondary school to house them.