Monday afternoon is football training for boys and girls at The William Stewart Foundation. Levison managed to be there today to take some photos of the teams looking very proud and smart in their new strips and boots. We are very grateful for everyone who supports us to support the children at The Foundation. Until recently, they had nothing. As well as enjoying the time with their friends, the football games and training, they now look the part too. Team sports are so important for morale boosting, self-esteem, fitness and mental health. These vulnerable children can forget about all their problems and enjoy being children for a while. They know that people who they’ve never met care about them enough to donate gifts of preloved kit and boots and other sports equipment.
So thank you today to Fakenham Town Football Club for the football strips, thank you to Bromley & Beckenham Hockey Club for the white strips the girls are wearing for their football training and thank you to Letchworth Garden City Eagles for the football boots. Goal keeper gloves were kindly donated by Dan Cook and Joe Mant.
Julian Chenery from Wear a Sports Shirt Day collected all of the above and sent it to Dundee to go on the container to Malawi. Thank you Julian for all your hard work and donations. Also to Julian’s boss Nikki Nagra for sponsoring the cost of the box of football boots. Everyone’s contributions are very much appreciated and you can see how happy the children are. Thanks for reading, Sarah x
Do you have a long list of people to buy Christmas gifts for? Do you wonder what you are going to buy for the man who has everything? Do you need to post gifts? Do you need extra gifts for teachers or Secret Santa’s? Do you wish there wasn’t so much unnecessary plastic and wrapping on Christmas gifts? Do you want to avoid crowds when Christmas shopping? Do you wish Christmas wasn’t quite so commercialised? help! I need a last minute gift!! Does this sound familiar?
We have the perfect feel good alternative Christmas Gifts. Our small charity is run by volunteers and has no admin fees so ALL your money is going to the project you choose to support with your gift. Your gift goes to support some of the most vulnerable children in Malawi. Also the gifts don’t have to just be for Christmas, they can be personalised, the amounts can be changed or if you have an idea of something else you’d like to support then send us a message. We can email your alternative gift for you to print off or forward to the recipient, or we can print it off and put it inside a nice card, add a message from you and pop it in the post. You decide who your gift is for, which project to support, how much you want to spend and we can ensure your Christmas shopping is hassle free. Have a look at the gifts below and keep the children in Malawi in mind when buying your Christmas gifts. contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com thanks for reading, Sarah x
A football or netball is £10, A blanket is £5, Blankets for 5 children is £25, Transport for a box of books £15, A nutritious meal for 500 children £100, Soap for 100 children £50, Tools for a family £20, A windup torch £5, 4 fruit tree saplings £10.
How to order:
Step 1: Choose the gift(s) you would like to give
Step 2: Choose whether you would like it emailed, posted to you or posted to the recipient
Step 3: Contact us via facebook messenger, the ‘contact us’ form on the website or by emailing contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com
Step 4: You can pay by cheque, via stripe on the website or via bank transfer (cheque or bank transfer is preferable as full amount goes to the charity)
Step 5: We will then despatch your request and send your gift to Malawi
Step 6: Tick off your list of gifts to purchase, sit with your feet up and a festive drink having avoided a trip to the shops! Merry Christmas!
The 3 C’s of life: Choices, Chances, Changes. You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.
This is very true for most of us. However, if you are living in poverty, a lot of those choices might not be choices that are open to you. They are only choices for other people. Those choices don’t apply to people like you. You are too poor to get yourself out of the situation you are in. You are stuck without choices, chances and changes.
What if the choice is to go to primary school today hungry, or work all day for 10p to try to buy some food?
What if the choice is to buy some food or to buy a candle so you can have light to do your homework?
What if you want to go to get a job but you’ve no shoes and and only have rags to wear?
What if you’ve worked really hard at primary school, passed your leavers exams but you cannot go to secondary school because you can’t afford the school fees?
The hundreds of vulnerable children supported by The William Stewart Foundation don’t have the choices that we take for granted. Choices aren’t for the most vulnerable. Chances for a better future aren’t going to happen by themselves. Change cannot happen without help. Without our help. Without your help.
These children want to have choices, have chances and make changes. They need opportunities and they need us. Eventually, they will be self-sufficient, but they need our compassion and commitment in the short term. Can you help a vulnerable young person to go to secondary school for four years? It’s less than £1 a day to sponsor a young person and give them choices and chances to make positive changes. Can you help us change lives in Malawi? contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com The young people below are all looking for a sponsor to have the chance of education. thanks for reading, Sarah x
One of our trustees, Christine Cresswell, has been busy making beautiful paintings. She is donating all proceeds to our charity to support The William Stewart Foundation. These paintings can be found on her facebook page @christineartformalawi or by clicking the link on our website page Fundraising – Get Involved.
I’ve uploaded some of the lovely artwork and have some more to do tomorrow. Her selection of cards will be added over the next few days.
These paintings are an excellent price for original paintings so grab yourself a bargain and start your Christmas shopping for unique gifts that have a feel good factor as you know all the money is going to a very worthwhile cause. Christine has such talent and we are very fortunate that she is donating all proceeds to our charity. She sold a few paintings at a recent fundraising event at which we raised an amazing £1,000 in total. I hope you enjoy looking through the paintings that I’ve uploaded so far and check back again for more gorgeous paintings and cards. Christmas shopping couldn’t be easier from the comfort of your home and knowing no one else will be purchasing the same gift!
There will be news of other ways you can support our charity this Christmas coming very soon. So as they say ‘watch this space’. thanks for reading, Sarah x
Just a quick blog tonight. Malawi is a big place. We say we are supporting The William Stewart Foundation in Malawi….but where in Malawi? Well here are some maps and photos. Ibuluma is a rural village near Chitipa in the far North of Malawi.
From Chitipa to Chisenga (where the nearest secondary school is) is 25 miles.
From Chitipa to Ekwendeni (where the container goes to) is almost 200 miles which takes approximately 5 hours. So it is a very long day when Levison and team go to collect all the boxes. Hope you found these maps and photos interesting. You can sign up to the blog to keep up to date with the latest news. Thanks for reading, Sarah x
Today Levison had arranged with the headteacher of Chambo Primary School to pay a visit. Levison was delivering 17 boxes of books that we had sent as part of the School Literacy Project. This is a project that has the potential to make a huge difference to the lives of hundreds of children living in extreme poverty.
Chambo Primary is the primary school nearest The William Stewart Foundation, Ibuluma Village in the Chitipa District of Northern Malawi. There are 8 classes in this school with 70-80 children in each class. Approximately half of them are children supported by The William Stewart Foundation, so today was very much about those children as well as their peers.
Imagine, as a teacher, not having the resources you need for your class (I know most teachers here dip into their own pocket to buy extra resources for our children, but this goes way beyond that). Imagine not having books at school. Imagine having no internet and computers. I can just about remember that but our children will never have been in a school without technology. Imagine not having desks and chairs and having to sit on the floor all day. Only one classroom at Chambo Primary School has desks and benches.
Literacy starts a long time before children go to school. Even babies look at picture books with their parents and grandparents. Toddlers know that the story continues by turning the pages in a book and that the pictures tell the story as well as the words and they follow the words with their fingers even though they aren’t reading. Children can recognise environmental print (think of them spotting their favourite fast food restaurant as you are driving past) but the children in Ibuluma have missed out on that also. So if there are no books in these children’s homes they have missed out on years of literacy and enjoying books before they even get to school.
When our children go to school they practice reading and writing every single day, even if it’s only a small amount of time. Paper is plentiful as is the choice of books. Most children will have books to take home to practise their reading. Not the children from Chambo Primary School, Ibuluma. Until today. Now 17 boxes of books have been delivered, along with strong ziplock plastic bags to protect the books. Children can now borrow these books to take home. Hopefully, they can read their books with their siblings. We want books to become an every day item….a very special and enjoyable item….but to be used every day. These children deserve our support and we want to thank every single person who has helped with the first delivery of this project. We are going to liaise with the headteacher and see how this project is getting on and if there is more we can do to support them. We want children to achieve as education is so important for them to be able to have brighter futures.
We estimate this project was about £350 – £400 to deliver. It didn’t cost us that much as we had many people donating the bags as well as the hundreds of beautiful books. Also some people were able to donate the £15 required to transport a box of books on the container. We think this project is £400 very well spent and we thank everyone who contributed. What we do is always about teamwork and if you’ve been part of this team then be proud as you are #changinglivesmalawi Get in touch if you’d like to help us. Enjoy the photos and thank you for reading and celebrating this success with us. Sarah x
Fundraising enabled a library to be built and named after Emma Buchanan, a lovely girl who sadly passed away. She loved reading and, if she had been in better health, would have loved to have visited Malawi.
Shelves have been built in the library and we’ve been sending books. There are more on the next container; educational books as well as fiction. Also some tables and chairs.
This morning Levison sent me photos of young people sitting reading in the library. I asked if he could ask a couple of the young people what they were reading and why they picked the books that they had. It was really enlightening to hear from them and find out a bit a more information.
Moses is in the white t-shirt and Lameck in the pink t-shirt. Moses has a sponsor and is on the apprenticeship scheme. Lameck doesn’t have a sponsor and does casual piece work to try to buy food.
Moses said he wanted to look at stories in books and, if possible, wants to write his own stories. Unfortunately, Moses had only completed his first year in secondary school and then dropped out due to lack of resources and money to pay his fees. He then was able to be sponsored to go on the apprenticeship scheme for two years. After hearing he would like to write stories, I contacted his sponsor today to ask if they would be willing to support Moses for three years if he was to go back to secondary school and finish his education as Levison said that is what Moses would love to do. His sponsor was delighted to be able to help with this. Moses will find out tomorrow that he is able to return to secondary school in January and I’m sure he will work hard.
Lameck told Levison that he was interested in learning more about culture so that’s why he chose that book. Lameck has no sponsor. He didn’t even complete primary school and sit his leavers exams through no fault of his own. He only had rags to wear. He didn’t have notebooks and pencils that he needed to write his lessons. He had no choice but to drop out of primary school. So, despite wanting to learn, unless his luck changes, he is destined for a low paid job (if he can find a steady job) or doing piece work as and when work is available.
It would be amazing if someone could sponsor Lameck to go on the apprenticeship scheme for two years to be taught practical skills or if he could finish his last year in primary school, do his exams, and then go to secondary school for four years. It’s £25 per month to sponsor a child or young person. You can sponsor as an individual or a family or share the cost with a friend. Can you imagine if we hadn’t been able to go to school because we didn’t have a notebook and pencil? Sponsoring Lameck might be the most important thing anyone ever does for him. Can you give Lameck the gift of education. Please? contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com thanks for reading, Sarah x
Lots of young people reading books in the library this morning. Lameck was reading about history and culture and Moses was reading different books with stories as he’d like to write stories too.Moses had completed one year of secondary school but dropped out due to poverty. His sponsor has been supporting him on the apprenticeship programme but is going to support him to go back to school. Life is looking good for Moses thanks to his sponsor.
Lameck didn’t even get to finish primary school due to extreme poverty and has been trying to do casual work ever since to buy food. Lameck deserves a chance to finish his last year of primary school and go on to secondary school. He clearly likes learning and reading and is trying to better himself. Please can you give Lameck the gift of education?
Just thought we would bring you some photos of the feeding programme today. Approximately 400 children came and were fed today. The children have nsima (made from maize), beans, tomato relish and vegetables. This is their biggest and most nutritious meal of the week. As there are so many to feed, the children are fed by age groups. We are grateful for the volunteers who cook and serve the children.
You can sign up to receive updates from our website. Thanks, Sarah x
The big cooking pot of nsima (maize) cooked over an open fire. This method isn’t as safe as an enclosed stove and also uses more wood. The eco stoves that have been made are too small for this pot but hopefully a bigger one can be made to accommodate this huge container.
A great photo of one of the eco stoves, made by the apprentices, with a generous donation from Welding Engineers. Because they are enclosed, they are safer for the person cooking, and any children. They retain more heat and also use less wood which is much better for the environment. People also spend less time gathering wood each week.
some of the younger children enjoying their lunchone of the younger children, Legina age 6, enjoying her food
I was going through some photos from a recent event and am just amazed at the difference in Laston since he has been matched with a sponsor. He was malnourished, in rags with shoes that were far too small for his feet. £1.50 was all that a farmer paid him for a month’s casual labour. Things seemed hopeless for him and his grandmother. He’s happier, feeling and looking better, has a monthly food parcel, access to the weekly feeding programme, a blanket, clothes etc. He’s just left primary school and, instead of his education being over which is what happens to most children, his sponsor will pay his fees and he will start secondary school in January. He has said he would like to become a lawyer. Lots of studying and hard work and who knows? Laston may achieve his dreams. There are 30 children who have left primary school who are waiting for a sponsor. Can you help one of them achieve their dreams? Its £25 per month contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com thanks for reading. Sarah x
It’s a national holiday in Malawi today. The schools are closed and people are celebrating Mothers Day. It made me wonder what the children who are supported by The William Stewart Foundation are thinking and feeling today.
The Foundation supports approximately 800 children and young people through different projects. These are some of the most vulnerable children in the world, suffering from malnutrition, extreme poverty and most have experienced grief and trauma due to the loss of a parent or important adult caring for them. Do the ones that have lost their mums have memories of them? Were they too young to remember? How many children are now carers themselves? Of course we know it’s not just females that have caring roles but today we thank the women who are bringing up their own children, other people’s children, grandmothers, aunties, big sisters, and some who are not blood relatives but have loving, caring hearts. Life is very hard but even harder when you’ve got nothing and you and your family are very, very hungry.
The African Proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ is so true and The William Stewart Foundation is part of that village, raising the most vulnerable children, feeding them, clothing them, trying to give them hope for a better future. We can all be part of ‘the village’ for these children, playing an important part in their lives, supporting them so that the mothers of the future have opportunities that previous generations haven’t had. Happy mothers day to all the caring women in Malawi. Thanks for reading, Sarah x
Hi, I thought it might be good to give a few facts for anyone who has joined us recently. If you have juststarted following us ….. welcome!
In Malawi it gets light at approx 6am and dark at approx 6pm all year round. The Foundation now has power but none of the houses in the area have electricity. So unless people are lucky enough to have a candle or a windup torch they are in total darkness after 6pm at night. How can children read or do their homework in the dark? That’s why we want every child to have a windup torch and we welcome donations of candles and windup torches.
The William Stewart Foundation supports over 800 orphans and other vulnerable children through a variety of projects, as well as supporting the elderly and infirm. Approximately 500 children turn up each weekend for a meal at the Feeding Programme. That might be their most filling and nutritious meal of the week. As there are no big charities feeding children at school in that area, some children walk up to 20km for a meal. Teachers have noticed a difference in the children’s concentration since the Feeding Programme started. They have also reported that the children are more confident now they have new clothes instead of rags. Last year 20 children who are supported by the Foundation, out of a class of 80, all got higher results than their peers in their primary school leavers exams.
70 of the most vulnerable children and young people now have been matched with sponsors, ensuring they have a monthly food parcel and that their secondary school fees are paid. Without this support, the children supported by The William Stewart Foundation do not get to secondary school. We have young people waiting for that opportunity to see if they can go to secondary school with their friends in January…or if their education is over. It’s only £25 a month to make a huge difference to a young person.
Class sizes are up to 80 children and at the primary school nearest The Foundation, the children sit on the floor. We are collecting reading books for them so the children have books to practice reading. There are mixed age groups in each class as, due to the dire poverty, children miss chunks of school to try to earn the equivalent of 10p a day to buy some food (for reference a bar of soap costs approx 30p). One of the boys who has now been sponsored and is off to secondary school in January, used to work for a whole month for a farmer and get paid £1.50 for the month. Things have now improved greatly for him thanks to having a sponsor. So there are 16 year olds having just left primary school, desperate to get to secondary school. In Malawi, education is everything and out of reach for most. They are required to supply their own stationery, again another challenge for the poverty stricken.
Football and netball are really popular and the children and young people love to play both at The William Stewart Foundation. They are able to forget their problems and have fun with their friends. New footballs and netballs are always needed!
The nursery at the Foundation is run thanks to a monthly donation. 50 children meet for 3 sessions a week. These children are age between 4-6 as children start school at age 6 in Malawi. The children receive food each time they meet and they received uniforms and fleecy blankets recently. We would like to gift each child who starts nursery a bag with uniform, a blanket, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and other essential items to support their wellbeing and attendance at nursery.
Hopefully, you’ve found these facts interesting but please do message if there are other facts you’d like to know. I’ve attached photos below of things that we are collecting to support the hundreds of children at The William Stewart Foundation. We would love it if you could purchase a few things next time you are shopping please, or let us have preloved items that are in very good condition. Thanks for reading. Sarah x
