Made in Malawi is an independent charity registered with the UK Charity Commission that focuses on the Chipoka village of Southern Malawi. It was founded in 2011 by a group of like-minded friends united by a desire to help not only the children of Chipoka, but also those of the surrounding villages. The mission of Made in Malawi is to support the local community by providing funding, advice, learning materials and infrastructure so that children and adults can receive a quality education and also learn necessary life skills in a safe and friendly environment. In short, all the things that we take for granted.
While many children in Malawi do receive primary education the quality of their schooling can often be very poor and insufficient. There are myriad schools that are under-staffed, under-resourced, under-funded and overcrowded. This creates a very challenging environment for students and teachers alike. For the most these primary schools will also be very basic, deprived of those fundamental resources like textbooks and learning aids. In addition it’s also very likely that the school won’t have access to electricity or clean running water. The lack of teachers in Malawi leads to extreme ratio gaps, in fact in a lot of schools there might be as many as one hundred kids for every teacher, which greatly exceeds government recommendations, whilst also complicating the delicate learning process.
In light of these severe problems, Made in Malawi has set out to improve the quality of education for the children of Malawi. We do this with the help of UK, US and European donors, supplying books, toys and other basic learning resources so that teachers have the materials they need to do their job. We also provide funding and expertise to build safe and clean new school buildings. We create jobs and training initiatives for local teachers and, wherever possible, we adjust class numbers to maintain a student to teacher ratio of no more than 40:1.
Presently primary education is free in Malawi, however rates of drop-outs are very high and, according to UNESCO, as little as 58% of children will complete a full course of education, whereas 20% of children will repeat school years, sometimes several times. The economic and social pressures of living in such an under-developed region can often cause strain on families and it’s not uncommon for this to impact upon the children. By the time students leave primary school they are usually much older than primary age. Some will have to repeat several years before they finally finish, if they don’t drop out, and in the more rural schools pass rates can even plummet to a saddening 15%.
Made in Malawi provides special support to under privileged, disabled and orphaned families within the community. Without this, many of the children (some as young as 6 years old) would be forced to work, look after siblings or help their parents instead of attending school. Made in Malawi also run community outreach projects to improve the lives and living conditions of the community as a whole. We also help the locals prepare and recover from the annual floods that ravage the region.
Our team is very passionate about what we do and we have a long term commitment to the local communities in which we work.
