While our Scottish Trustee, Alan Laverock, was caught up in the Omicron crisis and had to leave Malawi, our new Malawian Trustee, Remmie Kamanga, stepped up to the mark and visited our partner, the Diocese of Karonga, with Mercy, our manager in Malawi, last week.
We set up the partnership with the Diocese in 2019. We are supporting six ‘Alison2’ girls in Karonga and those girls start Form 3 next month. We will support additional girls starting in 2022 and until they finish their secondary education. Six of these will be supported at St Mary’s Karonga by Lancashire West Methodist Circuit and a further 4 by our new ‘Katy’s Fund’. Six other ‘Katy girls’ will be at Kaseye Girls’ Secondary School in Chitipa, a new school for us and one which is in the far north of Malawi, close to the Tanzanian border. It is also a Diocese of Karonga school and a welcome expansion of our partnership with the Diocese.
The Trustee visit was important in terms of strengthening our partnership and confirming our shared values. The girls we support are chosen by the schools on the basis of need, not academic ability or any other attribute. We are lucky in having Remmie on our Board; he brings long experience of education in Malawi at a number of levels.