When we first visited Khombwe in April 2009, up in the rolling hills of Lizulu Zone there were three classes (Standards 1,2 and 3) with the school set to expand to standard 4 by 2011. The School had a wonderful Headteacher, Mr Liwonde, and two other trained teachers. However, Khombwe Primary School had no school building! One class was taught under a tree, another under a thatched make-shift shelter, with the final class taught in the village church. This left the teachers with nowhere to store their little resources and only the church to teach all 3 classes in when the rains came. So desperate was the community here for a school building that they had already started to mould bricks when we first went to visit the school. Their hope was that we, at Inspire Malawi, would see their desire and would be able to support the construction of a new school.
Khombwe Primary School desperately needed four classrooms, toilets and both teaching and learning resources and we are delighted to report that in August 2010 we completed our biggest project to date by providing Khombwe Primary School with four new classrooms, six new toilets and a mountain of educational resources. We were delighted this year to receive support from the AV Foundation who sourced funding from the Charterhouse Charitable Trust.
Staff, pupils and their families at Queen Anne’s School in Caversham were also heavily involved in the fundraising for Khombwe, and on 19th August sent a team of eleven Sixth Form students and staff to Malawi in order to paint, decorate and officially open this new school. The team from QAS were, in fact, so wonderfully dynamic, fun and hard working that we were able to paint a fifth room next to the school that is to be used as a nursery!
The Opening Ceremony on Monday 30th August 2010 was spectacular and we were honoured to welcome Mr Nkhata, District Education Manager (DEM) for Ntcheu District to preside over the ceremony and officially open the new school. It is his hope that the Ministry for Education will now compliment the work of Inspire Malawi by providing these new classrooms with chairs. We were all very moved by the wonderful singing and dancing performed in celebration of the development and enjoyed a lovely lunch provided by the community.
We have achieved some amazing things this year in Malawi with development projects that will benefit hundreds of children for many years to come. Khombwe and Njonjo Schools are now safe and inspiring learning environments and many PE teachers in this Zone are now more confident and prepared to deliver lessons in this important subject area. Congratulations and THANK YOU to all of our sponsors and supporters here in UK.
