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Our research student introduces herself

My name is Maeve Rafferty and I am very excited to be working with the Mamie Martin Fund to conduct research for my dissertation looking at how MMF-supported women navigate their careers, tertiary education, and sexual and reproductive health after graduating from secondary school. I am an MSc student in Africa and International Development at the University of Edinburgh.

My interest in international development stems from a desire to see equal opportunities afforded to everyone worldwide regardless of their background and characteristics. Specifically, I am interested in how sustainable development can be achieved in East and Southern Africa through political-economy means. On a macro-level I enjoy exploring what this means for governance both on the continent and internationally. From a more micro-perspective I am particularly interested in the intersectionalities of development with gender, displacement and business. Since completing my BA in Business and Political Science at Trinity College I have worked in development firstly, with GOAL as a Development Education Officer in Dublin and latterly, with Viatores Christi as a Project Support Officer in Kampala and, post-Covid, remotely in Dublin.

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Gift Aid is a win-win arrangement

Gift Aid it

Thanks so much to those who gift aid their donations to us. We’ve been spending some lockdown time digitising our gift aid records and checking them all as we go. This is a reminder of what Gift Aid is and what the rules are.

Adding Gift Aid to your donations means that, as a charity, we can claim an extra 25p for every £1 you give. It will not cost you any extra. Free money. This is a great boost to our funds every year.

You can only do gift-aid on donations for which you receive no benefit, so it can’t be a payment for goods or services. We can claim it on donations for our gift cards because you, the donor, are not getting the school uniform or pens, etc..

You need to make a Gift Aid declaration for us to be able to claim. Our gift aid declaration is now online, though we can always send you a paper form. If you are a regular donor, it is most likely that we already have a completed declaration from you – you could always get in touch to check if you wish. When you donate through VirginMoneyGiving, they collect the Gift Aid on our behalf.

Do I pay enough tax to Gift Aid donations?

Your donations will qualify as long as they’re not more than 4 times what you have paid in tax in that tax year (6 April to 5 April). The tax could have been paid on income tax or capital gains but no other form of tax applies.

If you pay tax at a rate above the basic rate, you can claim the difference between the rate you pay and the basic rate on your donation. Win-win.

Thanks to all our donors for their loyal support, whether than can include gift aid or not. Without you we would not be able to support girls at school in North Malawi.

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2021 is a special year for MMF

It was in 1921 that the young newlyweds, Jack and Mamie Martin, undertook the long and arduous journey to Malawi (then Nyasaland) where Jack was to take up his post as a Church of Scotland missionary. Thirty years ago, in 1991, their daughter Margaret returned to visit the land of her birth and to see her mother’s grave and the church her father built in Mamie’s memory. It was during this visit that the idea of the Mamie Martin Fund was born.

We would like this special year, 2021, to be a bumper fundraising year as girls’ access to secondary education in Malawi is still challenging.  This is where you, our lovely supporters, come in. We will have a bike ride, where our friends and supporters and their friends will contribute cycling distances to get us all to Malawi, virtually following the route taken by Mamie and Jack.

As part of ‘Pledge 100‘, we would also like folk to come up with ideas of their own to raise money – 
e.g. doing 100 walks, swims, cakes made etc
Or if 100 seems too much then 30 somethings.

So, thinking caps on, and email us with your ideas at [email protected]

Meanwhile we wish you all a good New Year and health and happiness in 2021.

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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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Working together

It’s so important that organisations working in similar areas share ideas and resources, where possible. We have been pleased to get to know Maura’s Mission, another small Scottish charity which supports education in Malawi. Maura’s Mission is run by nurses and teachers who work with two schools in Malawi to identify the most academically gifted pupils from the poorest families in Malawi and then support them through school.

That is a slightly different approach than we take with MMF girls; we ask schools to identify the neediest girls for our support. However, we both support secondary school education and are committed to helping these children reach their potential. The schools Maura’s Mission supports are in the same geographical area as two of our schools so we have much in common in terms of the transport and communication challenges. We have enjoyed sharing our stories and information.

We manage our work locally through Mercy Sibande, our Malawi Manager. Mercy does termly visits to each of the schools which we support. We find this contact hugely valuable and are so pleased that Maura’s Mission have also engaged Mercy to do similar work for them. They will benefit from Mercy’s experience and expertise and we are glad to have this connection with the work of Maura’s Mission.

We can all learn from each other and we don’t need to waste our scarce resources inventing new ways of doing things when we can share information and connections like this.

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International Day of the Girl Child 2020

On Sunday 11th October we celebrate International Day of the Girl Child. The girl child is fundamental to our mission and our work. We believe that the education of girls and women is essential to the well-being and development of any nation. On this day we are pleased to launch a new report on the subject of girls’ education and the contribution which the Mamie Martin Fund makes. 

The report is based on the research of Anna Freidenfeld as part of her MSc in International Development at the University of Edinburgh. It sets out the current situation relating to girls’ education and summarises the literature about it.

While we can only ever support a small number of girls at school (138 this year) Anna’s research found that 81% of MMF-supported girls successfully completed secondary school. This figure compares very favourably with the most recent Malawi-wide data from UNESCO which recorded that school completion in Malawi stood at just 21% in 2013. Anna also found that MMF’s work is effective in supporting girls with day-to-day expenses. This is because we take a holistic view, providing some money for the necessities which the girls cannot afford and without which they could not remain at school. 

We can only support the girl child with your help and are grateful to all our donors and supporters. The best thing that you can do to help us continue this work for girls’ education is to sign up to a regular donation, however small. It is our small, regular donors who are our financial backbone. On behalf of the girl child in Malawi, thanks for all your support.  

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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. 

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Reflections on a day’s cycle

Monday, 3 August 2020 – Day 4 of the Story on Bikes – Inversnaid Bunkhouse to Killearn

Setting off from Ayrshire to meet up with the riders for the fourth day meant a crack-of-dawn start and a 2-hour drive. The road to Inversnaid from Aberfoyle is the road we would be cycling from Inversnaid to Aberfoyle in just a few minutes. That dull overcast rainy morning drive up and over the hills hadn’t exactly filled me with enthusiasm but after the obligatory photo and video opportunities three cyclists set off: Moira, Shelagh and me (Willie Sinclair, Mamie Martin’s grandson). The gradients seemed more manageable in real life than in anticipation. I was a bit disconcerted, though, while toiling up one hill when a car pulled up beside me. The occupants wanted to know how to get up Ben Lomond! I heard myself say “If I was doing that I wouldn’t start from here!” I suggested they head for Rowardennan, a 35 mile drive away.

The midges were out but pedalling steadily and keeping my mouth shut I avoided the worst of them. However, we had a rendezvous at Kinlochard Boat Club with cyclists from Strathendrick Baptist Church and that meant stopping beside the mirror-flat Loch Ard. The ever-generous Wrights were waiting for us with coffee and the most amazing cycling fuel I’ve ever experienced. We were only 10 miles into our actual day’s plan but it seemed important to share Ian’s load by eating as much of the “snackery” as possible: parkin and flapjack. Mmmmm. While we consumed calories, the midges consumed us. I stopped counting bite-marks after 35 and just kept pacing about trying to avoid them. Meanwhile Moira was interviewing Kathleen for the video that is on here.

We followed the Wrights through the Loch Ard Forest trails over some pretty bumpy surfaces, our skinny-tyred road bikes coping well. Forest rides are great for avoiding the wind but you do need to know where you’re going. Food was a theme of the day. A picnic stop at Lochan Spling (any Gaelic speakers who can shed light on that name?) and a lunch stop at Gartmore Village Hall were the Wrights’ subtle way of preparing us for the Gartmore to Drymen leg of the ride. Childhood memories of journeys from Milton of Buchanan to Aberfoyle by “The Old Gartmore Road”, and the excitement of leaping out to open the gates for my Dad (and whatever bunch of friends/relatives were visiting us) to drive through, didn’t include the hill we had to go up. I suppose in the 1960s we would have been going down North in a car instead of up South under our own steam. The term “unrelenting” could have been invented for this climb. We live in Angus so most of my cycling now involves hills, but the steep ones are short and the long ones are more gradual. Gartmore to Drymen is both steep and long, with many false tops luring the unwary cyclist into a disappointing not-yet-final effort. My usual approach is “head-down-and-grind-away” in the lowest gear possible, ignoring everything and everybody around me. My reward, as I finally reached the top was the glorious view and an Osprey casually checking out the Muir Park reservoir as it flew west towards Loch Lomond. (There’s a nest site at the Lake of Monteith, just a few miles East of Aberfoyle.)

Moira and Shelagh are uphill heroes and downhill demons with well-set-up bikes (Moira’s has disc brakes) while I was riding a 1970s Raleigh Carlton with braking technology that was devised in the 1950s. So, despite my greater mass, gravity got them to Drymen before the rest of us. Part of the final leg from Drymen to Killearn via Gartness was shared with the West Highland Way. Ian warned us about absent-minded walkers. We managed to dodge them. My faulty childhood memory banks had Drymen and Killearn a long way apart so I was delighted to see the rooftops of our destination much sooner than I expected. But it was up one final hill. A spectacular evening meal topped off a memorable day in the saddle and I was exceedingly glad NOT to be doing the next leg to Falkirk: the forecast was for heavy prolonged showers.

The success of this whole Story on Bikes has been a surprise. It had looked like the Pandemic Lockdown had killed the plan but changing and adapting resulted in the participation of many more people in many different ways. I was ‘lucky’ that Eileen volunteered me to do a stage in reality. I also clocked up miles beforehand in the #Stay-at-Home version, as did 42 other people!

Moira spent a lot of time during each ride filming, photographing and interviewing followed by a huge effort editing it all into manageable wee chunks to be uploaded to our YouTube channel. Take the time to watch the video of this day and then please hit the Like button, subscribe to the channel (no cost involved) and SHARE SHARE SHARE!

Thanks to all our stay at home riders and donors!

Thanks are due to:

– all the riders, Stay-at-Home or on-the-day

– Eileen for being my co-driver and for meeting us at the end of the day’s ride

– the un-named friend of the Wrights who delivered them, their amazing food and their bikes to Kinlochard in the morning

– Moira for organising and editing and shepherding the whole project.

And finally.

It wasn’t designed as a fundraiser so much as an awareness-raising event. Thank you, however, to all who donated to the Mamie Martin Fund.

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Echoes of the past in Glebe House, Tarbet

The ‘Story on Bikes’ reached Tarbet, Loch Lomond on a sunny Sunday, after a morning cycling up the western side of Loch Lomond. Glebe House is a beautiful guest house now, sitting up the hill in Tarbet looking over the loch to Ben Lomond. In Mamie’s day, it was the manse, occupied by her family while her father was the local minister, and in her letters she describes the frequent visitors. It’s a warm and welcoming house and Bernadette Rainey, the owner, made sure the cyclists were comfortable for their picnic lunch.

Mary Haggerty from the local heritage group, called in for a short visit . She had encouraged Margaret Sinclair in her last writing project, towards the end of her life, a short history of Mamie’s family in the manse. As the sun sparkled on the loch, it was easy to imagine how Mamie and Jack loved the Lake in Malawi . This was a very special lunch stop for the Mamie Martin ‘Story on Bikes’.

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Story on Bikes launch

Our ‘Story on Bikes’ bike ride has been a real success. An important aspect of that success has been the connections made or strenghtened with like-minded organisations. We were grateful to be able to launch the ride from the birthplace of David Livingstone in Blantyre, Scotland on Saturday August 1st. Douglas Hay, a Trustee of the David Livingstone Trust, welcomed us to the site where our Scottish Patron, Alison Cameron, sent the riders on their way. They were headed to Tarbet, Loch Lomond, the home of Mamie Martin. 

The site in Blantyre has been sadly neglected during lockdown but we all hope to visit again once it is possible to have volunteers back on site and when the restoration work is complete.

The cyclists had ridden from Edinburgh the previous day and they cycled to Balloch from Blantyre, visiting Tarbet on the Sunday. A warm welcome awaited them there – and look out for that video story. Mamie would be happy to know that connections between Scotland and Malawi are still so strong and that her conviction about the necessity of educating girls is now widely accepted as true around the world. The Story on Bikes project raised more than £5k for the education of girls in Malawi. Thanks to the numerous people who made this possible.