< Malawi Archives – Page 7 of 8 – Mamie Martin Fund

Tag: Malawi

Posted on

Research student outcomes

We’ve been delighted to have hosted an MSc research student from the University of Edinburgh. Anna Freidenfeld was studying International Development and has now completed her dissertation on ‘Barriers and Enablers to Girls’ Secondary School Education in Northern Malawi.’ Supervised for MMF by Moira Dunworth and Jean Gordon, both of whom are established researchers, Anna produced an insightful piece of work about girls’ education, why it is important and how work like ours makes a real difference. 

As well as looking at the barriers to girls’ education in Malawi, Anna critiqued some other approaches and found that our ‘Ready to Learn’ (R2L) fund, which helps the girls with necessities they can’t otherwise afford, is an enabler, viz., ‘Unlike the […] approaches that champion “just add women and stir” without considering the gendered dimensions of poverty, initiatives like the R2L fund can better ‘level the playing field’ with boys by helping to dismantle gender related education-barriers, such as that of period poverty.’ The needs with which the MMF girls have asked for help are illustrated in the image. Culturally it is difficult for them to ask for help with sanitary wear so it does not feature highly in the data. However, it is a serious need and so we now provide reusable sanitary pads for all MMF girls from a local business, Supreme Malawi.

Anna concluded that our inclusive approach to supporting girls at secondary school leads to a much higher retention rate than the national average. 81% of MMF pupils (2014 – 2020) completed their secondary education and this contrasts starkly with the national average of 21% (UNESCO, 2013)

It is helpful to us to have an updated list of resources about girls’ education which we can and will use to support our argument that girls’ education is one of the most important areas in the development of a nation. By doing our little bit, we are making a real difference to the girls we support and, by extension, to the development of Malawi. Thanks for your help in enabling us to continue this work year on year. 

Posted on

Connections discovered through Story-on-Bikes

Many of the stay-at-home riders in our recent cycling project, ‘Story-on-Bikes’, were previously unknown to the Mamie Martin Fund. It was wonderful to meet these new friends and supporters, albeit virtually. Through this contact we found many fascinating stories and connections. One of them is about Janet Cormack, the great-aunt of Lesley Clunas, a keen cyclist from the Black Isle.  

Janet was born in 1896 and her family folklore has it that she drove from Aberdeen, where the family lived, to Malawi in the 1920s. She got married there in Fort Jameson (now Chipata, Zambia, near the Malawian border) in 1927 so will have overlapped with Mamie Martin, though not in the same part of Malawi. Janet was matron of Blantyre Hospital in Malawi for some of her time there. 

Janet Cormack at Blantyre Hospital

Lesley first met her great-aunt in the 1970s when she returned to Aberdeen to die. Needless to say of such a strong spirit, she lived for almost two more decades. Janet died in 1982, aged 96. We are grateful to Lesley for sharing this story and the photos. Clearly Janet and Mamie were kindred spirits, both independent-minded women who lived and worked in Malawi at the same time. They each devoted their lives to others and would both be delighted for us to make these connections now and to work together to support girls’ education in Malawi. 

Posted on

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. 

Posted on

6th July Malawi Independence Day

On the 6th July, we send our very best wishes to our friends and partners in Malawi. In the early twentieth century Malawi was a British protectorate called Nyasaland and in 1964 after independence it became Malawi, the country we know today. Because of Jack and Mamie’s time in Nyasaland in the 1920s, our friendship goes back a long way. We know from their diaries and letters that Jack and Mamie loved Nyasaland/Malawi. They enjoyed learning the language, making new friends and exploring the beautiful lakeside flora and fauna. The friendships they made were long-lasting and can be traced right through to the network of donors and supporters of the Mamie Martin Fund today. Mamie and Jack would be delighted at the strong links today between our two countries, supported by the Malawi Scotland Partnership and the Scotland Malawi Partnership.  

‘Milunga dalitsani Malawi’: God bless Malawi!

 

 

Posted on

Meet our research student

We are delighted to welcome a Masters’ Degree student from the University of Edinburgh on placement with us. Anna introduces herself below. She will help us with researching the evidence for supporting girls’ education in Malawi and will examine our existing data in order to enable us to report on our work more comprehensively.

My name is Anna Freidenfeld and I am lucky enough to be researching for my dissertation with the Mamie Martin Fund from May to August this year. Having graduated from my bachelor’s degree in Geography at the University of Nottingham last year, I am now working towards a master’s degree in International Development at the University of Edinburgh. In the study of development, I am particularly interested in the topics of education and gender.

I am passionate about women’s empowerment and have been involved in several NGO-based societies focusing on this matter. I have also worked in two schools, assisting lessons and tutoring pupils, and I greatly appreciate this opportunity to work in the educational arena in a more academic sense. I am very grateful for this opportunity and I am really looking forward to working with the MMF!

Posted on

Board meeting in spite of Covid-19

Like everyone else we are adapting to the restrictions in relation to Coronavirus and our Board meeting this month was online. This presented some challenges, of course, but needs must. We got through a lot of work, approving a new policy on data security and reviewing existing policies. We have postponed Mercy’s trip to Scotland, of course, and we won’t be travelling to Malawi this year. Even if restrictions are lifted, the risk to Malawi is such that we will avoid any travel for this year.

The Board meeting looked forward to things we will do after the present crisis. We still hope to go ahead with our ‘Story on Bikes’ cycle project and we are working on a photo exhibition which will travel to at least three venues – let us know if you can offer a venue.

While following guidance and staying safe, we must all remain positive and look to what we will be able to do once this is over. We greatly fear for the consequences of this virus reaching Malawi and other countries without the health services which so many of us are grateful to have. 

This is a good time to assess the Board’s digital skills and our volunteer, Kathleen Sargeant, will be sending a survey to our Trustees soon. We are not sure that they are looking forward to this but we all need to stay as up-to-date as possible with technology, particularly during this lockdown and whatever restrictions will be in place once it is lifted. Stay safe everyone! 

Posted on

Video volunteer making a difference

We’ve been taking videos and trying to get better at providing you, our supporters and friends, with reasonable quality footage of our work in Malawi. Apart from Doreen, our Administrator and Bookkeeper in Scotland and Mercy, our Malawi Manager, we are all volunteers and learning as we go. Imagine our pleasure, then, to get an offer of help with our video editing, particularly the sound which is so challenging when filming in Malawi (you wouldn’t believe the level of background noise everywhere!). 

Richard Robinson is now our Video Volunteer and his work can be see in the two most recent videos we’ve published – a story about Benadeta and one about the Thompson Girls. Richard’s background is in rural development and the environment. Recently he has been involved in local Scottish community projects addressing climate change, which led him to learn basic video-editing skills. His daughter’s school have a long established partnership with a school in Southern Malawi; she visited as a teenager and the family later hosted an exchange student. This led Richard to become very aware of the difficulties of education in Malawi, particularly for girls.

We are hugely grateful for this help. As those of you who have done any video-editing will know, it is a very time-consuming task and can be very frustrating. But you can look forward to better-quality videos now that we have Richard on board!

Posted on

Schools roundup

As Angie and Moira come to the end of their Trustee visit to Malawi, here’s a roundup of the schools they visited. They were able to visit all the schools which we support, four of them are run by the CCAP Synod of Livingstonia, one is a Government school and one, the most recent addition, is run by the Diocese of Karonga.

Bandawe Girls’ and Karonga Girls’ are CCAP boarding schools. This year we support 43 pupils (about 10% of the school roll) in each.   Elangeni Secondary is a CCAP co-ed boarding school where we have 24 MMF-supported girls this year. Embangweni Secondary School for Deaf Children is run by the CCAP and we have moved from supporting one girl here to six. Three of those are funded by the new Thompson Fund, two from the new Alison Cameron endowment and one is a core-fund MMF girl, now in her final year.

We are pleased to be in our second year of supporting Mchengautuba Community Day Secondary School, run by the Government and the community. Finally, this is our first year of supporting girls at St Mary’s Karonga, a girls’ boarding school where we now have six girls on Alison Cameron scholarships, funded by the Scottish Government. 

The girls whom we support at all of these schools are very needy and we have heard heart-rending stories of the obstacles they overcome to even get to school. One 13 year old pupil made her way alone over 450 Kms (not a typo!) to take up her place, with nothing. She ran out of transport money and sat by the road until someone asked what she was doing and gave her a small amount of money to get her to school.

The commitment to education on the part of these girls and their families is breath-taking. We heard more than one story of families selling their land so as to pay fees for their daughters and granddaughters. While our help often feels like a drop in the ocean, it makes a real difference to these girls, their families and their communities. Thank you all for your support.

Posted on

New partnership in Malawi

Angie Wynn, Vice-Convener of the Mamie Martin Fund, signed a partnership agreement on Wednesday, 9th October with the Diocese of Karonga. The Diocese has two schools which meet our criteria for funding and we are able to support six girls at St Mary’s Karonga, a girls’ boarding school just south of Karonga in the far north of Malawi. These six girls are ‘Alison girls’ because their funding is part of the second Scottish Government endowment funding to honour the lifetime work of Colin and Alison Cameron in Malawi and Scotland.

The agreement was signed for the Diocese by Mr Remmie W. C.  Kamanga, the Diocesan Education Desk Officer. We are hugely appreciative that Remmie broke his holiday to meet us at St Mary’s for this historic signing.

Until last year we had only worked with the CCAP Synod of Livingstonia, with whom we have historic links and a real sense of shared purpose in continuing the work of Mamie Martin. Last year we broadened our remit, signing a Partnership Agreement with Mchengautuba Community Day Secondary School. Now that we have a similar agreement with the Diocese of Karonga, we can work with more sections of Malawian society to support a wider range of girls at secondary school level.

Posted on

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.