Six schoolgirls in Karonga, North Malawi, are being supported by the Lancashire West Methodist Circuit, through MMF. Our photo exhibition is a popular way of telling the story of girls’ education in Malawi, why it is important and how MMF can help. It’s great to see the sharing of news of these girls in the churches of that Circuit.
On two Sundays in July, Croston Methodist Church invited other churches and the local communities to see the photos and celebrate the work that we are doing together. Dilys Lightfoot reports on those events:
“During the service we sang as a reflection Dzuma Lapita (Night has fallen ). It’s a Malawian song sung at evening time. It was adapted by Tom Colvin, another Scottish minister who had worked in Africa.
We finished with a few quotes about education starting with the MMF strapline, “Educating Girls, Empowering Malawi.” One photograph shows a few of the congregation around the quotation board. Grace, the young girl in the photos, read the Tibetan Proverb ,”A child without education is like a bird without wings“. I felt this particularly potent as she has come with her mum from Hong Kong leaving her dad and all her grandparents so she can have a freethinking education without the fear of suppression. I am just in awe of both of them and the sacrifices her family, too, have made in Hong Kong. Grace hasn’t seen her father for nearly two years. They came with very little English and none of her mum’s part.
The exhibition has been available to all our groups that use the building, also to the public. Today [31st July] we held a joint service with Mawdesley Methodist church so that they, too, could see the exhibition and we showed them the videos at end of the service over coffee.
At our special service on 24th July many of us wrote an ‘hello’ message to Mercy and the girls. At the moment I’m getting help trying to put it in a digital book to email to you which I hope you can pass on to Mercy.”
Dilys is sending us the paper version too, which we will pass onto Mercy in Malawi. She will share those greetings with the girls at St Mary’s Karonga.
We are so glad of this success of this new partnership and the way in which news of our work is being shared in a new part of the UK.
Note: ‘Grace’ is not the real name of the young girl described above. In line with our safeguarding policy, as well as changing her name, her face is blurred out in the photos.
Donations to this partnership fund are welcome through this fundraising page.