We are looking back at all that Mbedza has achieved in 2024. We have much to celebrate. 2024 has seen Mbedza provide over 3300 HIV tests, distribute over 46,000 condoms, provide 750 girls with sanitary kits, build 640 Esperanza Stoves, plant over 35,000 trees, support 60 children in Nursery Education and 88 orphans in Secondary Education. We have active HIV outreach programmes in the rural communities including the work carried out by our Hope Ambassadors and we have developed further our programme of sex and relationship education. We have amazing partners such as Accomplish Children’s Trust and the work they are doing with children with disabilities is transforming lives.

We are very aware that in our reporting through our social media we are nearly always sharing good news and success stories. Behind those stories are many challenges and sometimes failures. This blog post shares some of those challanges and failures and also highlights where we are stretched.

2022 was a difficult year for Malawians. The war in Ukraine did something to maize and fertiliser prices and introduced high inflation which has been running at around 30% but food inflation over 40%. In 2023 Cyclone Freddy destroyed homes in our communities and ruined the harvest. In 2024 erratic rains resulted in another failed harvest. Many people harvested nothing including many of our Mbedza staff. We in the UK do not understand what it means to live with this kind of food insecurity. In response we have started experimenting with some irrigation farming to provide Maize for our staff and our orphan education students. We notice that this year the price of fertiliser has gone so high it is difficult to see how rural Malawians can afford it except resorting to high interest loans from what we can only say are undesirable lenders.

As part of our environment strategy we have introduced garden projects. We have a pilot programme in Monkey Bay and with our Hope Ambassadors. We are training 20 people this week in soil conservation and gardens using compost manure. The aim is a more sustainable form of agriculture that nourishes the soil. Paul Keeley from Sustainable Global Gardens is providing the training and we are grateful for the partnership. Project development takes time and it’s the many failures at the early stages that enables the real learning to take place, so. we press on with this new initiative patiently.

Our orphan education programme has been more affected by inflation than all others. In some budget lines costs went up by 100%. It was a disappointment to us to have to reduce student numbers in the programme from 100 to 88 in September. Our goal is to improve access to education and in rural Malawi Primary Education completion rates are 27% and in Secondary 10% - the reasons are complex but driven by extreme poverty. We remain delighted with the incredible work that Daphney Phiri does supporting our students. Food insecurity has resulted in more safegurding situations and the role of Daphney as student support officer has never been more needed. Despite an intense hungry season we were very pleased with our MSCE results in 2024. 2025 will continue to be a challenge and cost increases will mean further reductions in student numbers unless we can cover the shortfall for this academic year of £5000. We don’t want to reduce numbers or even maintain them, children are crying out for the means to be educated and our goal remains to increase.

We were delighted that in 2023 our application to Green Match Fund was accepted and also in 2024. As a result of the match funding and your support we have been able to upscale our tree planting programme - 35,000 trees planted in January 2024 and another 35,000 ready for January 2025. Our goal is to create sustainable woodlots and provide household trees. We have a great team who monitor all our project villages until the community is ready for a handover process. Tree loss is an inevitable reality and we have developed a risk management process to offset various risks. Sometimes however, the tree loss is catastrophic, and a recent visit to one project revealed a loss of nearly 1000 trees. Farmers often burn the stubble in the fields as they prepare for the new planting season and unfortunately the firebreaks were insufficient and the woodlot caught fire. Mbedza has a provision for worst case scenarios and we are working with this community to start again, with better firebreaks this time.

2024 has seen a breakthrough in our engagement with young people. We can see this in the attendance figures in our library at Songani. We also see this with our Hope Ambassador programme. This group are active in community outreach supporting our goal to eradicate HIV. We cannot achieve the goal of a HIV free Youth without talking to young people about sex and relationships. This is not a topic most Malawians are comfortable with but our staff are growing in their skill and ability to engage with this subject. Our Malawi Director wrote a play this year to address myths and misconceptions about sex and our Hope Ambassadors have performed this in various locations. As effective and important as the Hope Ambassador programme is we have no funding to maintain this in 2025 but we don’t want to lose the momemtum gained in 2024.

Our sanitary kit programme for girls is part of our health strategy and this year we have been able to provide 750 girls with a washable kit. Not only that, the girls receive an introduction into sex and relationship education and importantly an opportunity to ask the real questions on their mind. Our programmes do not operate in isolation but have great synergies and linkages. Tackling period poverty improves girls attendance in schools. We have girls around Songani making the most of the opportunites we can support them with - they are supported by our orphan education programme, they have a sanitary kit, are given some sex and relationship education and make use of the study resources at the library in our centre. They receive a portable fuel efficient cookstove as part of our stove programme. They also have access to great female role models in our Mbedza team. But, the sanitary kit programme has been one of our biggest challenges to fund and the progamme has secure funding only until February 2025. 

If you’ve managed to stay engaged to this point, well done! Apart from some of these challanges let’s tell you about one great opportunity. This year we met Alex Knapp and she has developed a programme called impactful giving - impactfulgiving.co.uk - if you go to this website you will discover that three Mbedza programmes are featured on it. Her goal is to engage businesses and corporates with their social responsibility agendas and her website enables them to do this through programmes in Malawi - education, climate change, carbon mitigation, stove building, health/hiv, sanitary kits for girls and more. If you have any links with businesses who might appreciate this opportunity please share impactful giving with them. We have a role model business associated with Mbedza who take very seriously their responsibility to climate through carbon mitigation, you can read about SpaComms here: https://spacomms.com/esg/

Thank you, our dear community, without you we wouldn’t be able to do any of these things.

Julian Watson