Our MOEP students begin their new school year
In June we wrote a blog describing several of the challenges with our Orphan Education Programme - challenges of post cyclone impacts, high inflation, hunger and poor harvests. The result was that we were anxious that when September came we would have to reduce student numbers in the programme significantly.
We are delighted that with a growth in sponsorship in the UK and Belgium over recent months, and a new exchange provider who has increased the amount of Malawian Kwacha we get to the pound, we are able to maintain our student numbers at 86.
Earler this year we purchased Maize so that we could support our Orphan Education students in the 2025 to 2026 programme. Many had failed harvests and the hungry season has already started.
We are grateful that large donations from UK donors enabled us to purchase when the Maize price was lower.
At the end of September last year’s Form 4 students received their MSCE results and as in previous years we were encouraged that our results were above national averages. For example, the national pass rate for girls was 54% and ours was 64%.
Daphney discusses the new student contracts that students are asked to commit to.
The new term has had its usual busy start with Mbedza staff visiting students at their schools, distributing school resources to students, visiting student homes and hosting a school group from the UK. Manor CE Academy visited Mbedza in October, the group of 36 students and staff brought 36 fully equipped school bags for MOEP students.
The images above show MOEP students with new school materials and interacting with UK students from York.
We are delighted that this new academic year sees the addition to the MOEP team of a second member of staff. Prisca Ibbu will be working hand in hand with Daphney Phiri. Prisca joined Mbedza last year as an intern/volunteer whilst she completed her final year at University in Zomba.
The final start of the year task is the selection of new students who will join the MOEP programme in Form 1. We will be recruiting 19 new students. This is such a joy to us because only four months ago we expected to be recruiting no new students. We want to thank new sponsors from the UK and Belgium for joining the programme who, along with existing sponsors have enabled this change in circumstance.