2016 Malawi Journey

 

With a Global Grant from the Rotary Foundation’s World Fund and District 6040 funds, three representatives of Kansas City Plaza Rotary will be in Malawi later this month to launch a  student empowerment project at the Malawi Children’s Village. 

 

Malawi Children’s Village is a village-based orphan support program in Mangochi, Malawi. It supports more than 2,000 HIV/AIDS orphans living with members of their extended family in 37 villages.

 

The village helps vulnerable children from birth to 18 years providing shelter, food, safety, health care and education until they can live independent healthy lives. 

Plaza Rotary is a long-time supporter of Malawi Children's Village. 

 

Our first project was n 2003, followed by a project to develop latrines in 2005, 2007 and 2013; a Malaria bed nets distribution program in 2009, and delivery of Malaria medicines in 2010. Our total contribution to the Malawi Children’s Village, including matching grants, is more than $105,000.

 

This Global Grant, for nearly $32,000, funds a curriculum for primary school teachers to refine and implement as an after-school program once a month for a year.

 

The program focuses on encouraging goal setting, confidence building, and life choices that affect educational attainment, and address health and environmental issues that can prevent children, especially girls between ages 12-16, from completing primary school, attending secondary school, and qualifying for entrance to either university or technical training schools.

 

The grant also covers the installation of solar lights in five primary schools, as well as furnishings and supplies for a study area in each school so that students can study at night as well as during the day.

 

The Plaza club’s Vocational Training team, led by Elizabeth Usovicz and including team members Bill and Cindy Schmidt, departs on March 31 to train teachers and collaborate on the study area installation. The team will spend time in collaboration with teachers, observing and coaching, through mid-April. 

 

This project addresses a humanitarian need in basic education and literacy. Primary schools in Malawi are under-resourced, under-staffed and under-funded, creating extremely challenging conditions for teachers and students.

 

According to Unesco, 58 percent of children in Malawi will complete a full course of primary school. In addition, 20 percent of children repeat one or more years of school. Students must pass final exams to progress to secondary school — but just 8.4 percent complete secondary school. 

 

The goal of the program is to help students continue learning, increasing the population in secondary schools and beyond. Malawi is among the least-developed countries, ranked as the seventh-poorest in the world. 

 

Plaza Rotary is proud to support our Vocational Training Team in this effort to help the residents of the Malawi Children’s Village.