Volunteering as a concept
seems like a package deal. You get to go abroad, spending weeks, months and
sometimes years in hot countries working with all types of new people to do
'good'. However, it's not without flaws. Countless NGOs working in some of the
poorest countries across the globe fly out volunteers in the hope of doing
'good' but often they fail to cater to the needs of the communities they work
in. Building hospitals or schools that become unwanted or unsustainable as the
cost to run the services are just too high. The previous team visited a village where a hospital had been built 15 years ago - and never opened. At the time of their visit, a maternity wing was being added to the same hospital.
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| Our team artist, Keri, drawing and painting pictures from a Malawian textbook on a classroom wall. Photo: Meka Beresford |
International Servics keeps sustainability at the heart of its projects and recognises the importance of adapting to the needs of the communities it works in. In Dedza, the team have been working on designing sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) and anti-bullying sessions after the last cohort identified the issues local children faced through a baseline survey. We have been delivering these sessions in schools and Molima Family Home to equip young children with knowledge about their human rights and empowering them to complete their education.
Despite some initial delays in starting our planned activities, we identified and researched other opportunities to help in the community to fill our time. That's where Inspire Malawi enters. Similarly to International Service, the 2010 registered charity listens to the needs of the communities it works in and places great emphasis on sustainability to ensure that it's work can continue long after the charity has left. Founded by Michelle Rowe, Inspire Malawi strives to build schools in areas where children cannot access state schools without having to walk great distances and in a survey we carried out in our local community recently, we identified that this is common. The previous team in Dedza had also identified that a major reason why children drop out of school in the area surveyed was due to a 'lack of interest' - almost 20% in fact. You only have to see the inside of some Malawian schools to understand why and the teachers here have a daily struggle of trying to engage scores of children in an environment that is not very engaging at all. At Banda Hill, Inspire Malawi are working hard to change that.
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| Michelle Rowe, Inspire Malawi Photo: Meka Beresford |
We joined Michelle and her team to help paint the inside of Banda Hill, a school located in Dedza that reached out to Inspire Malawi after the wooden classrooms they built in 2014 were burnt down by vandals. Locals had built and registered the school as local children had to walk for over an hour to reach the closest school.
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| A student looks on whilst Jason, Dan and Archie discuss painting strategy... Photo: Meka Beresford |
"There was no roof, the walls were charred
black and the children were sitting on rocks," Michelle said of the first
time she visited the school. "It was very upsetting."
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| Banda Hill Primary School Classroom Photo: Meka Beresford |
Since that first visit, Michelle has worked with various donors and fundraised to completely transform the school which now stands as two proud blocks. Inside the classes Michelle has plastered the walls with educational images from textbooks that teach about various topics from agriculture to the digestive system.
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| A classroom is certainly more engaging once the Inspire Malawi team and locals work their magic. Photo: Meka Beresford |
The 34-year-old isn't just in the business of building classrooms! She has worked with Banda Hill to bring better sanitary facilities to help girls stay in school during menstruation, built a "tippy tap" to promote hand washing and combat illness, and developed a perma-culture garden - one of her proudest ventures yet.
"Food security here is a big problem and Malawians grow a lot of maize but maize is not endemic to Malawi and they struggle," Michelle said. "So diversifying their food source and also creating better, more modern growing techniques that work with the environment was important."
The crops that are grown in the garden are managed by the students as part of their curriculum agriculture lessons. Whatever is grown is then sold by the children to teach entrepreneur skills. This money is subsequently used to buy books, pens, pencils and chalk.
The gardens are a new direction for the charity, but have proved more than successful as Michelle explained that she has seen similar methods being adopted by the families of students.
She said: "It makes me very happy, as I walk around this area I see that people have recreated these ideas. Little by little we're having an impact." She moved to Malawi permanently in 2016 to work at an International school in Lilongwe and hopes that the second class block we helped to paint will be open by January. However, she still has plans to continue working with Banda Hill to build a library and house hundreds of donated books that the school has received because of Inspire Malawi.
"We work hand in hand with the community and this community have been very motivated. I think it's an exciting environment to be in," she said.
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| Photo: Meka Beresford |
Michelle explained that since starting work at Banda Hill the number of students has increased and for her, that's what drives her work - to make sure every child has a good education.
"The enrolment has actually risen since we've built these classrooms which is good. The teachers are more inspired to work harder. I think in Malawi unless you have a good education it doesn't lead to much," she added.
Written by Meka Beresford
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