Julian’s visit September 2023

In September I returned from a four week visit to Malawi and this was an opportunity to visit all our Mbedza projects and meet all our staff. It was an enriching and encouraging time and a wonderful reminder that Mbedza is doing valuable work in our project communities. Our four key strategic approaches in education, livelihoods, environment and health remain highly relevant and important.

Meeting our two newest Mbedza employees, James and Kenneth was a joy. This was very important to me because they are two boys who last year completed our education support programme (MOSES) - four years in Secondary School. I was keen to know what they thought of MOSES and working for Mbedza. James and Kenneth are being trained as tree project monitoring officers now that we have upscaled our tree programme.

I asked them what difference MOSES had made in their lives and they said 'before MOSES we had nothing and our homes had nothing, we had no hope of an education. MOSES came and was a parent to us and provided not only for ourselves but also for our homes. We now have our MSCE.'

I asked them what their new employment meant to them. The reply was 'this is wonderful to us, we are somebody now and we are now the breadwinner for our homes, we can buy food.'

I was impressed with how much they have already learned from their recent training and the questions that they fired at me. A special thank you to our MOSES sponsors who I am sure, like me, will take great joy in seeing these boys flourishing.

Malawi experiences several hungers. One is food, but the story I meet time and time again is the hunger for education and learning. I was struck on this visit by the number of adults I met who expressed that one of their deepest longings is to complete the education they missed as children. The reason every time is because of poverty. This makes the next story especially pleasing. Daphney reported recently that two of our MOSES students from several years ago have just graduated from university.

Arthur McDonald was one of our best performing students at MSCE some years ago. He was selected to study at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Arthur graduated in medical imaging. Our aim with the MOSES programme is to ensure that vulnerable students are provided with financial, educational, and emotional support to achieve equal access to quality education and opportunities. We rejoice with Arthur in his success.

On the same day Chisomo Nankhwali also graduated in computer systems. I remember meeting Chisomo in 2018 when he was speaking to our MOSES students at one of the motivation days that we run as part of the MOSES programme. I remember being amazed at his choice of topic because he spoke to our MOSES students about how to continue to learn through hunger. I was struck by Chisomo’s determination to succeed and that there is an endurance I know nothing about.

We are so deeply grateful to our sponsors who enable this programme to exist. Thank you.

Julian Watson

Mbedza