Sarah’s blog 01/05/24
At the end of this month our charity, Changing Lives Malawi, will be 5 years old! To mark this amazing milestone, we will be sharing stories throughout the month, looking back at how things were and what has been achieved. To start the month I’m sharing our birthday appeals.
We have been fortunate that so many people have donated their preloved books to our School Literacy Appeal; individuals, adults, children, local nurseries, schools, church congregations and you all have been making a big difference to literacy levels in the far north of Malawi.
We have been able to stock the shelves in Emma’s Rainbow Library, as well as donating boxes of books to local primary schools. These schools have hardly any resources and our aim is to support children and young people to become more confident readers. How can they practice reading without any books?
The pre-school children in the nursery have missed out on years of pre-reading skills; they haven’t had the picture books to turn pages, to sit on an adult’s knee as a baby and have a favourite story read to them. This was evident when the pre-school children first encountered books that we had sent. They had no idea how to turn pages or what to do with the books. Now, thanks to the support we receive, we are ensuring each child at Bright Futures Nursery has at least two books to take home with them to keep. We want every home to have some books and families to start looking at these books together.
We are appealing for people to get involved and donate preloved books as part of our 5th birthday celebration. We are also appealing for preloved school uniform, shoes, crocs, sliders, trainers (all sizes) but they must be in very good, clean condition. If you can make a small financial donation with your books, clothes or shoes then please do as that will really help us with the costs of transportation.
We are also appealing for people to sponsor a box of books, clothes or shoes. It costs us £17.50 per box on the Bananabox Trust container plus there are additional costs of collecting the boxes in Malawi. We will write your name, name of a loved one, your business or even a funny message on a big label on your box. It would make such a difference if there were enough people covering the cost of boxes and would, therefore, make it such a team effort!
For more information, or to get involved you can email me on contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com Together, we CAN continue Changing Lives (in) Malawi. Thank you to everyone who supports us, Sarah x
