A very big warm Malawian thank you to Fabulous Friends for their great support for the new school block at Kazembe Primary School in Lifuwu village, Malawi. My name is Francesca, from Italy, and I am the help2kids Manager in Malawi. I will keep you update on the progress of the construction.
In the meantime, I would like you to know more about the so called “warm heart of Africa”. Malawi is the essential Africa, the unconventional Africa, far away from the rest of the world. In Malawi a mix of different cultures and communities get on well and live together peacefully unlike many other countries in Africa. Malawi is a country which you fall in love with at first glimpse, but also allows for much to be discovered day after day.
help2kids started working in Lifuwu village, Malawi, in July 2012 with the aim at improving local education and supporting children in pursuing a better future. We believe that small actions have big impacts. In Lifuwu, help2kids works in partnership with the primary school of Kazembe, a nursery school and the local health centre. Our support consists in donating teaching and learning materials, stationery packs, and improving the facilities. Our work is strongly supported by our volunteers from all over the world who join our organization and assist us in our projects and programmes.
The village where help2kids operates is a small fishing village on the shore of Lake Malawi, in Leopard Bay. The people here live mainly from fishing and farming. Kazembe Primary School is one out of three school in the area, and it offers primary education to 745 learners between 5 and 16-17 years old. The size of the classes varies between 25 and 170 students, and the school is extremely under-resourced. Learners are expected to buy their own basic school materials and most of the family cannot afford either buying a pen. As a result, the kids often drop out of school simply because they do not have uniforms or their clothes are too dirty. They can also drop because there is no secondary school in the area, thus many parents remove their children from school to help the family make a living. The children are expected to help out with domestic works, to work in the fields, and to look after the younger siblings rather than going to school. Without motivation and hope for further education it is understandable why many of the parents think school is a waste of time.
In terms of infrastructure, Kazembe Primary School has two school blocks which accommodate four classes and two temporary shelters each of which divided into 2 classrooms. However, given the high number of students attending Standard 1 (163 students) and Standard 2 (150 students) classes, the teaching is very challenging and managing so many learners is often impossible. This also makes the level of learning very low for the kids.
The project of a new school block will lessen the problem of classes and to split both Standard 1 and 2 classes into two so that the teachers can enhance the learning and the kids can benefit from it and have a positive impact in the quality of education.
That’s all from Malawi from now. Thank you for taking time to read the post. We are very grateful for the support of Fabulous Friends and we look forward to starting the construction of the new school block at Kazembe primary school.
Best Wishes,
Francesca