< Girls Education Archives – Page 7 of 8 – Mamie Martin Fund

Tag: Girls Education

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Pledge 100 off to a great start

This being the centenary of Mamie and Jack Martin’s marriage and journey to Malawi, we launched our #Pledge100 project on 1st January. Shona McAllister is our first pledger – she will run a 5k 100 times this year. 

Shona used to run a bit many years ago but took it up seriously during the first lockdown. As part of a virtual running club, a group of six women who motivated each other, she achieved ‘Couch to 5k’ and decided to keep up her running. She says that she could not have done that without the support of those friends. Her ambition was to run well for half an hour. Having achieved that, she is now working on improving her pace. That is a bit tricky in the bad weather so she describes herself as being in ‘maintenance mode’ at the moment.

Shona reminds us that exercise is very good for our mental health. She says that lockdown transformed her lifestyle; she currently works from home and takes a lot more exercise. She and her husband have a new puppy, who is called ‘Emmeline’ after the famous suffragette. No more needs to be said about Shona’s views on girls’ education and her support of our work in Malawi. 

Shona’s connection with the Mamie Martin Fund goes back to her late father, who played in a band with Willie Sinclair, Mamie’s grandson. They held many fundraisers for MMF and Shona thinks of herself as running these 5Ks in her Dad’s memory. 

Shona lives in the southside of Glasgow with Queen’s Park and Linn Park nearby – excellent running opportunities. She hopes that the awareness and money which she is raising by this pledge will support our work with a view to improving equality and girls’ empowerment and reducing rates of child marriage in Malawi; she wants ‘to create a more equal society’. You can support Shona in her pledge or join her by also registering to do 100 of something this year.

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Human Rights Day

Today we mark the UN Human Rights Day. This is the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): a milestone document proclaiming the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. We share a few paragraphs from the recent MSc dissertation by Anna Freidenfeld who was on placement with us last summer. She makes some comments about how we might work towards the Global Goal of Gender Equality.

“In order to overcome education barriers rooted in patriarchal norms, wider communities need to be educated on the importance of girls’ education (1). Intersectional ‘gender sensitisation education’ could reduce the marginalisation and discrimination faced by girls – especially those with disabilities, young mothers and orphans of HIV/AIDS – which can push them to drop out of school. Furthermore, NGOs need to employ local women in positions of power to mirror the gender equality they are working towards in the wider world within their own structures (2). NGOs should also focus on helping reduce the cultural reproduction of gender hierarchies within schools (3,4). Accordingly, women need to become more involved in the management of schools. Mothers’ Groups are a good example of community collectives that are increasing women’s involvement in educational management. If NGOs work with local women they can better work towards ‘transformative gender mainstreaming’ in education-policy (5).

The best approaches to overcome education-barriers in Northern Malawi tend to be more holistic, combining multiple tactics and recognising the different education-barriers faced by different individuals. Clearly, the operations of NGOs need to be continually examined so they can work to improve their approaches. Notably, more education-barriers are bound to emerge in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, future ethnographic research in Northern Malawi is needed to provide different perspectives and explore further barriers and enablers to education.”

References:

1 Abane, H. (2004) ‘The girls do not learn hard enough so they cannot do certain types of
work.’ Experiences from an NGO-sponsored gender sensitization workshop in a
Southern Ghanaian community’, Community Development Journal, 39(1), pp. 49–61.

2 Duraiappah, A.K., Roddy, P., & Parry, J. (2005) ‘Have Participatory Approaches Increased Capabilities?’ International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (online). Available at:
https://www.iisd.org/publications/have-participatory-approaches-increased-capabilities 

3 Bourdieu, P. (1973) ‘Cultural reproduction and social reproduction’, pp. 71–112, in Brown,
R. (Ed.). Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. London: Tavistock.

4 Arnot, M. (2002). Reproducing gender? : essays on educational theory and feminist politics. London: Routledge.

5 Mukhopadhyay, M. (2004) ‘Mainstreaming Gender or “Streaming” Gender Away: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business’, IDS Bulletin, 35(4), pp. 95–103.

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Sally makes chitenje masks

Since early summer Sally Evans has been making face coverings for family and friends in exchange for donations to charity. She has made over 300 so far. The demand continues and masks made from African cloth, called chitenje (singular) or zitenje (plural) in Malawi, are particularly sought-after in Scotland.

Sally is a member of St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church in Edinburgh, who have been friends and supporters of the Mamie Martin Fund for many years. She is now accepting donations to the Mamie Martin Fund for her chitenje masks and has set up a page to make it easy for people to donate. 

Sally says, ‘I’m delighted to make some more face coverings to support Mamie Martin’s Back to School in Malawi after Covid fund to address some of the additional challenges in getting female students back to school after such a long interruption. I’ve been given some colourful fabric, normally worn by women in Africa, so will be using this as well as other remnants and recycled material. It’s a WIN WIN situation with fabric from Africa helping to keep us safe and helping to support girls’ education in Malawi!’

We are so grateful for this support and for the good-news aspect of the story. These are challenging times for everyone and Sally is bringing joy and pleasure to so many in her WIN WIN project. Thanks Sally! You can contact Sally directly about this on [email protected] You can also buy these masks at the Undercroft Café at St Andrew’s and St George’s West while our photo exhibition is there from 24th November.

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Alloway rebuilds hostel in Bandawe

Many years ago we were able to build a hostel at Bandawe Girls’ Secondary School in Malawi, by the lakeshore. Over the years the hostel fell into disrepair but we had neither the funds nor the management capacity to address this problem. Trustees from Scotland saw the poor state of the hostel on their visits. 

This hostel has now been completely refurbished. This has been funded and managed by Murray Hutchison and friends at Alloway Parish Church in Ayrshire, Scotland. Funds were donated via coffee mornings, Christmas Fayre and by friends of the Church and the school. The total cost was £23k but the impact on the 102 girls who live there in term time will be immense. To quote from the letter written by the Head Teacher, Mr Denis Kamata:

The hostel project has not just provided accommodation to the girls but it has also:

– Improved the health of our learners who will be not contracting skin and respiratory diseases that were the order of the day in the past due to the state of the hostel .

– Contributed to the enhancement of unity amongst our girls as the feelings of being discriminated against amongst those that were using the other good hostels will no longer be there.

– Enhanced the security of our girls and their property because of the nature of the windows with burglar bars, well fitting window panes and doors.

– Added significantly to the infrastructure development programme of the school.

– Helped our girls to understand that they are not alone in this global village but that there are people far away from Malawi that care and wish them well.

Before work started on the hostel refurbishment

Murray Hutchison’s report gives a flavour of the urgency of these building works: 

There is no doubt that the 102 girls living in this large hostel have had their lives changed for the better: water no longer pours in through holes in the roof and the toilets and showers (while  not what we enjoy) have been totally replaced and replumbed and  refurbished. The walls had to be taken down further than expected and their height extended to improve ventilation. Windows and doors have been replaced, a new roof constructed, repairs to foundations and rendering and a  total replacement of all electrics. 

The relationship between Alloway Parish Church started in 2006 when Ayr Presbytery made their first visit to Bandawe. The Church entered into a partnership with Bandawe mission station and Thipula Church and with BAGSS in 2008. Alloway’s two primary schools are twinned with Bandawe Primary where the Church undertook a smaller but similar hostel project in late 2019. This is Alloway Parish Church’s fourth building project at BAGSS. They focus on education and training in various ways and these building projects are a significant help to the school.

We are grateful to all those involved in this project – to Murray for masterminding the fundraising and overseeing the work, to Mr Chirwa (previous Head Teacher) and Mr Kamata for oversight of the work in Malawi and to the building company, Chumugogo Building Company.

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Photo Exhibition Premiere

Thanks to a generous donor, we now have a collection of mounted photographs of life and work in Malawi, with an emphasis on girls’ education of course. We are delighted to be able to show some of these photos for the first time as cafés and other venues reopen. The Wonder Spot café in Stockbridge, Edinburgh has made us very welcome and we love how these photos look in their art space. The photos can be seen by those in the café (take-away only just now) but also from the street. We’ve chosen bright and cheery photos from the collection to add positivity to the street as we all emerge from lockdown.

The selection and editing of the photos was achieved only because of the help of our photographic volunteer, Sue Dumbleton. In an organisation with minimal paid staff, the contribution of volunteers like Sue is essential to creative work like this. 

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The week that was – school visits in Malawi

Our Trustees have had a busy week in Malawi. With Mercy, our Malawian manager, they visited three schools. They are not used to setting off before breakfast and working right through till lunch, if they are lucky. ‘Let’s grab a coffee’ is simply not part of the schedule – not until the weekend anyway. Every term Mercy visits each of the schools we support. She always addresses the whole group, encouraging them and ensuring that they know to come to her with any problems.

In the first term Mercy also speaks individually to each of the girls who are newly on an MMF bursary. This is an important interview as it establishes the relationship which will last for all of that girl’s schooling and often beyond.

These are long working days; at one school we had 14 new girls this month and 12 in another school. Mercy also manages our small discretionary fund, out of which she gives money for the small necessities which most of the girls lack. They need soap and notebooks; they often need school uniforms and sometimes shoes or schoolbags.

Angie and Moira took the opportunity to chat to the girls when Mercy was conducting her individual sessions. That is always interesting, humbling, shocking (in terms of the hardship and poverty disclosed) and inspiring – all at the same time.

At one of the schools there are new buildings adjacent to the old school but no seats yet. The girls are used to sitting on the ground as there is no alternative outdoors. However, some of the classes are awaiting desks and chairs and sitting on a concrete floor is not good.

The girls are also eagerly awaiting the new hostel which is due to be built in the next year. The present one is so overcrowded that they need to sleep two to a bed. We look forward to seeing that new accommodation on a future visit. 

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Wedding list with a difference

On July 20th this year, one of our long-term regular supporters got married in Scotland. Hope Robertson married Malcolm Fleming on a lovely sunny day in Cramond followed by a reception near Biggar. Their special day brought sunshine to many girls in Malawi because they asked their family and friends to make a donation to the Mamie Martin Fund as a wedding gift. What a generous thing to do! In addition, the groom told the wedding guests about our work as part of his wedding speech. It is great when more and more people hear about our work and the need for it. 

This form of fund-raising is particularly appreciated in Malawi,  where money is central to wedding celebrations. Money is thrown in the air as the guest dance and that money is a vital part of the process of the couple setting up home together. Many of those who get married in the UK are lucky in already having a home, and Hope and Malcolm decided that they did not need any material gifts but would like their happiness to make a difference to girls’ education in Malawi. Their generous family and friends donated more than £2,300.00 – enough to pay for school fees for seven girls for a year. Wow!

If you also wanted to mark a special occasion and invite donations to the Mamie Martin Fund, you could ‘start fundraising’ on our Virgin Money Giving page or on Give as you Live. We’d love to know about your plans so that we can share them with other supporters and friends.

Huge thanks to Hope and Malcolm for this thoughtful and generous contribution to our work supporting girls in Northern Malawi.

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Pens and bands

Our new pens and bands are supplied by Ross Promotional Products Glasgow. The pens are made from recycled plastic and Ross Promotional are a Glasgow Living Wage company.

We’ll be sending a bundle out to Malawi with the next Trustee visit. Last year when we met with girls who receive  MMF support they told us that they’d like some way of identifying themselves as MMF girls within the school community so that they can make friends easily and offer each other support. We hope these attractive rainbow coloured bands will do this.

Here in Scotland, we will sell the pens and bands ( £1 each) when we are out and about doing talks and events. Watch out for news of how to buy them on our website shop and in the meantime if you’d like some, contact Mariot ( [email protected])

Tom Dallas, one of Mamie and Jack’s great grandsons, lent a hand to show off the pen and band in the video!

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A midwife’s night duty shift, Malawi, 1963

We are proud to have Alison Cameron as our Scottish Patron. So we were thrilled to see her 1963 snapshot of one night’s work published in the Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 72, No. 1, 2019. We are grateful to the Journal for permission to share it with you on our website. In this article Alison describes the pressures and uncertainties of giving birth in Malawi. It was a dangerous business then and, even though maternal and infant mortality rates have fallen considerably, it is still a dangerous process for mother and baby.

Malawi infant mortality today is 39 per 1,000 live births (https://data.unicef.org/country/mwi/#), down from 64 in 2007. The SDG target for 2030 is to reduce it to 12 deaths per 1,000 live births globally. As a means of comparison, it is currently 4 deaths per 1,000 live births in the UK. Maternal health is also an area of grave concern in Malawi. Malawi’s most recent estimated maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is 439 per 100,000 live births (NSO Malawi & ICF, 2017); below the WHO (2015) estimate for the sub-Saharan African region of 546 ( in 2000, it was roughly 1120, so it has more than halved in 20 years).

Malawi’s proportion of institutional deliveries has increased sharply from 55% in 1992 to 90% in 2015-16 (NSO Malawi & ICF 2017). Malawi provides free maternity care, but quality of care appears suboptimal (Leslie et al, 2016; Ministry of Health Malawi & ICF International, 2014). Health centres offer basic emergency obstetric and new-born care; a limited number of referral hospitals offers more comprehensive services. Malawi’s health system is affected by severe lack of physical, financial and human resources (Chimwaza et al., 2014).

Alison  has been a supporter of the Mamie Martin Fund since it was founded. She and her husband, Colin, have worked for 60 years to build and maintain civil society and governmental links between Malawi and Scotland. The Scottish Government has honoured that work by creating an endowment fund in Alison’s name and asking us to administer it. This fund supports 45 girls through school and 4 at university over four years each.

Source: National Statistical Office – NSO/Malawi and ICF (2017). Malawi Demographic and Health Survey 2015-16. Available from: https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr319-dhs-final-reports.cfm. Accessed 31 January 2019. Zomba, Malawi, and Rockville, Maryland, USA: National Statistical Office and ICF.

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The Thompson Scholarship Fund was set up in the autumn of last year to honour the memory of Jack and Phyllis Thompson. Their family, Scotland-Malawi Partnership and their Church colleagues in Malawi asked the Mamie Martin Fund to provide some scholarships in their name. The fund-raising page for this was on BTMyDonate, which is closing at the end of June. The money raised so far (£6,981.00, including Gift Aid) has already been received by the Mamie Martin Fund. This amount has been logged on the new page, hosted by VirginMoneyGiving.

The goal is to create three scholarships over the four years which is the norm for secondary schooling in Malawi. We will start that provision with two scholarships starting in September 2019 and add the third when the funding gets closer to its target. At least one of those places will be at the secondary school for Deaf children in Embangweni. All of the places will be for girls.

Thanks for all your support of this project. You can continue to help by sharing this link and encouraging friends and family to bear it in mind when undertaking challenges – a run, bike ride, climbing Everest, etc. On this new page you could set up your personal fundraising page, or just donate directly to the Fund. If you need any help, get in touch with [email protected]