End of year review and a look at the future
Photos above - Songani Library, newly painted Chiyambi Nursery, HIV testing in the community and Saplings arrive at Nakwhali Primary
In the UK we operate on a financial year April to March and as we look back at this last year we have so many encouragements to be grateful for. I think a year ago we really did wonder how we would continue to sustain our programmes especially as we were struggling with inflation in Malawi of around 35%. The harvest was poor exacerbating poverty in our project communities. The aid environment has become more difficult with the collapse of USAID and huge reductions in UKAid - although we were not beneficiaries of these programmes the impact has been that more and more organisations are applying for the smaller number of grants that are available. We noticed that grants we have had regularly were reducing in size, often by half.
Photos above - food resilience training, Kitchen Garden training, Clearing a site for a woodlot and sex and relationship education.
Mbedza is a small organisation but we deliver a high level of impact for the amount of funding we have. As we look at March 2026 we are:
Conducting food resilience training with our Orphan Education students.
We have just completed kitchen garden training at the Namadidi site where the new Special Needs Centre is about to open.
We have just completed the planting of 30,000 tree saplings in various villages and schools around Zomba and Monkey Bay.
Our Hope Ambassadors have been active in conducting outreaches in the community. Working alongside our HIV counsellors they have been promoting education about HIV/AIDS and opportunities for testing and counselling.
Following the Christmas Big Give our stove builders are getting ready to resume stove building in April - we have sufficient funds for three months of stove building.
The sanitary kit programme has been able to increase its provision and continues with the distribution of kits and our sex and relationship education.
The library at our Songani Centre continues to be a busy educational resource for Primary, Secondary and College students.
Our Nursery School in Monkey Bay, Chiyambi Nursery, continues to provide excellent early years education.
Photos above - Esperanza stove Kamphande village, HIV Counselling tent, Hope Ambassador outreach and Sanitary Kit distribution at Namitoso school.
2026 to 2027 continues to look challenging. Inflation in Malawi remains stubbornly high at around 25%. Fuel prices went up 42% last month. Recent events in the Middle East will impact oil prices and fertiliser prices and hit countries that are landlocked, like Malawi, even harder.
We want to thank you our wonderful Mbedza community of friends, donors and supporters who are resilient in giving to us year on year. We wouldn’t be able to do this without you and we do not take this for granted.