There was much excitement yesterday as there were lots of eggs to gather. These eggs were from the hens that had been hatched in the incubator so everyone was very excited that those hens have started laying.
Two students from Bright Futures Secondary School, Martha & Wongani, gathered the eggs and put them in the incubator to hatch.
Once the rainy season is over, an extension to the hen house will be built to ensure there is enough room for birds of different ages. It will be such a good learning environment for the students at Bright Futures Secondary School as they have practical agriculture lessons in their curriculum as well as classroom based learning.
Martha and Wongani aren’t used to talking to a camera but did a great job! Well done girls.
If you would like to support Martha and Wongani and all their friends at Bright Futures Secondary School and in p8 at Chambo Primary to eat a free school lunch each day during at the holiday study school please donate here https://donorsee.com/project/26846?share=1 None of the students have enough food at home and rely on their school lunches. The p8 students will all come for extra lessons during the holidays as they don’t get fed at primary school. It will be a real treat for them to have free lunches. And how can we expect young people to concentrate to study if they haven’t eaten? Please help.
Thanks so much for supporting our projects, Sarah x
The chickens are growing and students from Bright Futures Secondary School are learning skills by helping to care for them.
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Sarah’s blog 1/11/24
How is it the 1st of November already? So much happening, so much to do, but some great results are starting to show.
Levison sent this video yesterday of Martha and Asante helping to care for the chickens (chooks). This is the great thing about having projects like the chickens, pigs, goats and all the crops. They can be used for education as well as becoming income generating projects.
Agriculture is a core subject in the Malawian curriculum and students are very much hands on with projects during their practical lessons. They are learning skills for life. Many people in Malawi, grow crops or keep a few animals (if they can afford to) to supplement whatever other income they have. So students at Bright Futures Secondary School will have the skills they need to be able to be growing their own crops and keeping chickens, pigs or goats and they and their families will hopefully have a brighter future!
The incubator is working well now that it has it’s own solar power supply. However, the hen house needs an extension. If eggs were put in the incubator every day each small batch of chicks, hatching after 21 days, will need a separate area from the other chicks. This will enable them to grow safely and allow their progress to be monitored closely, including knowing which chicks have been vaccinated and when. So it is proposed that an additional room, like the one seen in the video, is built to accommodate more chicks and allow the incubator to have regular batches of eggs.
Good news for the chicken project with lots of new chicks being hatched…. but the bad news is that the truck has broken down.
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Sarah’s blog 13/9/24
Please will you help Levison? Life is hard and unfair for those living in extreme poverty in Malawi. Sometimes it seems like progress is being made only for something else to happen.
First – some good news.
There have been lots of eggs being laid and put in the incubator. There are over 50 healthy chicks now and more eggs are in the incubator keeping nice and warm. This is really good news for this project. Now that the incubator, which was bought with a generous donation from Lochlie Construction, has it’s own solar power supply, there is enough energy to keep it going 24/7 so the eggs stay at a constant temperature. We look forward to seeing more progress and will bring more news.
Thank you to everyone who has helped support this project
Now for the bad news.
The truck – which is absolutely vital and used every day has broken down. It was being used to transport supplies for the teachers’ accommodation project. Also, as water levels are low because it’s the dry season, water for making bricks and cement etc has to be brought by truck from the river to the site. In the borehole, there is only enough clean water for drinking so this water is very precious.
There is a local man with ox and cart and Levison has managed to hire him to help with moving water from the river to where the builders are working.
However, the truck is also vital for fetching maize and other supplies to feed hundreds of children every week as well as many other uses. Of course, every few months there are long overnight journeys to collect all the boxes we send from the container. Ekwendeni, which is the end destination for the container, is near Mzuzu. While this is in the north of Malawi, it is still a very long way south of where the community we help to support are. Bright Futures Campus is approximately 45km from Chitipa town and many of the roads are just dirt tracks. Especially when it is the rainy season, the rural roads are hazardous and often even the truck cannot climb muddy hilly tracks!
Levison and his team need our help and support to get the truck back on the road. It needs a new altenator and two new batteries. The batteries can be bought in Chitipa town but the alternator will need to be sent from Mzuzu. Nothing is straightforward! When the truck broke down, it was carrying supplies that had been bought for Bright Futures Secondary School (which opens again on Monday) as well as equipment for the building project. Eventually, they managed to get someone to come with a truck to transport everything safely back to campus. However, this cost money. So did towing the truck back. The mechanic came yesterday to look at the problem and he was paid for his time. However, nothing else could be done because of no money and no new parts for the truck.
Will you help us get the truck back on the road please? It is essential to the smooth running of all the projects and ensuring that hundreds of orphans are fed. We need approximately £650. Thank you, Sarah x You can donate via our page on DonorSee https://donorsee.com/project/24823?share=1 contact_us@changinglivesmalawi.com or sending us an email for bank details. Or you can also make a donation via the button on the home page on our website. Any donation will be very much appreciated. Thank you once again for your support, Sarah x
On this map, Bright Futures Campus is in the far north near Chisenga.
All the children are excited to see the truck coming back from collecting the boxes we sent.just one of the many journeys that the truck has made to collect supplies
Levison has been trying to buy trays of fertilised eggs to put in the incubator now that the incubator has its own uninterrupted solar power supply.
Who knew that fertilised eggs would be in such high demand… there is a waiting list… which Levison has his name on. In the meantime, there are some new additions to Holligan’s Hen House. Hopefully, once they have settled then there may be eggs to put in the incubator and chicks to hatch.
The hen house was named after my husband Stuart’s late aunt and uncle who generously helped to fund the building of Holligan’s Hen House.
This was one of the small projects that was successfully funded via DonorSee and we are very grateful to the people who helped fund the project. Please could you have a look at our other small projects that are on the DonorSee site? There might be one that you could spare a few £££ towards.
https://donorsee.com/project/24114?share=1 is for seeds and sweet potato vines for the students at Bright Futures Secondary School to grow. Agriculture lessons are a core part of the curriculum and they want to grow their own food.
https://donorsee.com/project/24111?share=1 is for the fundraiser to help five ladies who are living in extreme poverty and have health issues to start their own agribusiness. They have 50% of the money so can we help them raise the rest?
https://donorsee.com/project/23502?share=1 This one is to help feed the hungry preschool children at Bright Futures Nursery. There are several other projects so please do have a look to see ways your money can really make a difference.
Thank you for reading and supporting us to help some of the most vulnerable children and young people (and their families) in rural northern Malawi. Together we can continue Changing Lives (in) Malawi, Sarah x
Back in October, we had a fundraiser in Strathblane, with an exhibition and sale of the beautiful paintings by one of our trustees, Christine Cresswell. She has very generously donated all proceeds from the sale of her paintings, prints and cards to our charity. This is ongoing, not just from that day, so we are very grateful for her talents being used to help us. There is a link to her facebook page on this website and I will also do a blog highlighting her paintings soon.
The money from the fundraiser was agreed to fund the building of an extension to the existing hen house. The rainy season was obviously not the best time to start this project so the builders have been on site this last week now the rains are becoming less frequent. A few of the young people have volunteered to help with ferrying bricks for the builders and you’ll see Maria Chizumira in one of the photos. Maria was on holiday from first year at Chisenga Secondary School.
We look forward to being able to bring more photos of the finished hen house and also photos of the new residents….maybe we might even have some Easter chicks? Thanks for reading, Sarah x
