Sponsored Students
MEL responsibly manages funds that sponsor students through special, secondary and in some cases, higher education.
In Malawi education is difficult to attain. Primary schooling is paid for by the state, but students must provide their own uniform and books. When many families are struggling to feed themselves affording uniforms is often unachievable.
Secondary school requires all students pay a fee for each term, around £33 pounds a year covers all the terms for one student. It doesn't sound like much but in most communities families farm to feed themselves and have little left to sell. Often there is no one with any spare funds to buy anything anyway.
MEL takes kind donations and uses them to help students through secondary school. Only students who cannot afford it themselves are helped, and they must meet the grades set by their teachers.
Here is a very small selection of the students that are currently being supported by generous supporters of MEL.
Lettina Khonje (left) has had to have both eyes removed through retinal blastoma. She was very withdrawn, distraught when her friends left for ‘ordinary school’ but sponsorship at Nkhotakota School for the Blind has given her confidence and a life outside the bounds of her grandmother’s hut. She smiles, walks unaided around the known areas of her village, when she comes home for holidays.
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Jessie (left) Mphande’s family could not afford to keep her in secondary school after her father died and her mother had to go back to her own family. Thanks to generous sponsorship, Jess is retaking Form 5 in a better secondary school, to obtain improved grades and a Maths pass she couldn’t attain because of malaria during her original exam. She’ll then be sponsored through teacher training college with funding already in place. Mphatso Banda is similarly placed in Nkhata Bay School, thanks to a sponsor, but his higher education is uncertain at present.
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Thompson Banda, hearing impaired, is being sponsored at Dwasulu CDSS to continue his secondary education.
Sekelani Saka and Brainmore #imba are both studying journalism in Mzuzu, courtesy of even more generous sponsorship.
Sekelani Saka and Brainmore #imba are both studying journalism in Mzuzu, courtesy of even more generous sponsorship.
Thanks to generous fundraising by Tanja & Scott Davey, we are able to support, currently, 8 local albinos with high SPF suncreams, sunglasses (where appropriate), long-sleeved clothing, hats, funds to travel to hospital for further treatment. MEL has also funded a sensitisation campaign to deter discrimination against this vulnerable sector of the community.
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Margret Mudyanaye (left) came to see Caroline in December 2015 with excellent secondary school results but no chance of reaching her goal of training to become a nurse. Thanks to generous sponsorship, she is now working as a volunteer at Ngala Health Centre while she awaits acceptance at a nursing college or university.
In In a recent text to Margret’s sponsors, she thanked them for ‘making this nobody a somebody’. |
