Malawi Schools Trust

Malawi Schools Trust is a small charity that helps children access education in rural Malawi. Although 80% of children in Malawi attend primary school, only 20% move on to secondary and a tiny fraction of these are girls. Without an education, these children can only look to a future of early marriage and extreme poverty. Although only a young charity (formed 2019), the team behind it have been working in support of the partnership between a school in Surrey and Malawi for over a decade. What makes this partnership special is that the UK students form real connections with their counterparts in Malawi. They work alongside each other to renovate classrooms, help in the local orphanage and importantly, spend time getting to know each other. This is far more than just a school trip or charity tourism for the UK students – it’s an experience that helps them to better understand their own place in the wider world, and to plant the seeds of their adult lives as responsible global citizens. Projects go through a rigorous evaluation process to ensure they will deliver real benefit, are agreed in partnership with the local community and are sustainable. Over the ten-year partnership, the Malawian school has grown from a couple of derelict classrooms to becoming one of the best schools in Malawi, with a handful of students gaining university places every year. It is almost self-sustaining and now the charity is forging a new partnership with another school in desperate need of help. Because the charity is small, it’s able to guarantee all donations go directly to fund the projects they manage closely. And as their running costs are covered by philanthropists, nothing gets swallowed up by admin costs or wastage. You can read more about their work here: malawischoolstrust.org facebook.com/malawischoolstrust Instagram.com/malawischoolstrust