As usual this past year was a very busy one for us with challenges as well as positive news and lots of fun activities.
Challenges
As we know, countries like Malawi, which are not responsible for climate change, are suffering the most. This year has seen greater food insecurity caused by flooding and droughts. Some lost their homes including one of our MMF girls. There was a cholera outbreak and, to make things worse, a devaluation which led to an increase in prices. We have seen more extreme poverty and a greater need for support from the Ready to Learn Fund. This has meant more work for Mercy, our Country Director, who has been responding to these needs by providing more money for transport and even shoes and umbrellas. As a result of the increasing need, we now pay exam fees as well.
Activities
- Mercy and Moira, our voluntary administrator, were the first to take part in a new series of very successful podcasts run by the Scotland Malawi Partnership (SMP).
- We continued our fundraising events, including 3 successful coffee mornings and our 30th Birthday celebrations.
- We continued our networking activities, attending events to build relationships with other organisations working in Malawi.
An exciting first for us this year was being part of a Big Give matched funding campaign. Much to our surprise we raised the £2,500 we needed within 24hrs!
Funders
Firstly, a big thank you to all our regular funders! This is our core funding on which the majority of the girls depend.
Our thanks also to the supporters of the Thompson Fund, to the donor of the Pat and the Katy Funds as well as the Lancashire West Methodist Circuit.
MMF Girls
We have supported girls in 6 boarding schools and one Community Day school. News of our school leavers has been positive in that many did well in their exams with some being offered places at universities and other tertiary education and training centres. We wish them all well!
Governance
Meantime, our work behind the scenes continues. We meet on Zoom which means people outwith the Central belt of Scotland can attend, including those based in England and Malawi. Advice from the latter is invaluable and communication has improved greatly now that our Malawian colleagues have greater use of What’s App.
We have been busy working on a new, efficient way to collect data on the girls. This is needed to monitor our work against our aims and objectives, for marketing, for funding reports and applications and, importantly, to check requisitions and ensure your money is used wisely!
The new priority, Localisation, is proving to be a journey of complications! Unfortunately, the bank would not accept our two Malawian Trustees. Their addresses were not specific enough! They still take part but as advisers. We hope to change this in the future, and our policy remains one of working towards empowering those in Malawi. We always think “can this be done in Malawi by Malawians?”
The full plan can be seen on the website.
Admin and IT
We are extremely grateful to our volunteer, Moira, who continues to do much of our administration and IT work. It is both vital and time consuming. Our thanks too to other volunteers who keep us going including those who worked hard to facilitate our AGM.
Looking forward
We now have 49 new girls and one returnee attending school and Mercy has already visited each school to meet them and introduce herself.
We have a new school year with 133 girls to support. We are fortunate in having Mercy as our Director in Malawi. She builds such good relationships with the girls and this review finishes with a quote from one her motivational talks to them:
“your financial situation should never be seen as a barrier, a reason to fail, but for you to reach your full potential”.
So, there is vital work to be done! We look forward to your help and support in 2025.
