Starfish Malawi Children - An Exciting And Innovative Project In The Warm Heart Of Africa
Wed, Jul 21st 2010
Below is a letter to Jenny from Maggie at Starfish Malawi Project - this letter tells a story better than any article we could write of the plight of the children here and of the challenging lives that they lead.
4th July 2010 Dear Jenny Mosley and friends,
A huge “thank you” from Starfish Malawi for your wonderful donation of puppets and the DVD. I cannot tell you just how much this will mean to these children who live in such raw poverty - Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Many children in Malawi find themselves tragically orphaned because of many factors, such as sickness, famine, lack of medical care, etc. One in seven has Aids, and this together with malaria are two of the biggest killers. When a child is orphaned it falls to other family members to care for them.They willingly take in their younger relatives, even though they have hardly enough income to support their own, immediate family. Obviously, increasing the number of dependants like this adds to the levels of hardship for that family enormously, yet they do not turn them away!
Our Glad Tidings Orphan Care and Hope Nurseries provide daily nursery care, and schooling. The children are given a meal of nsima porridge, the staple diet in Malawi, and a vegetable relish.
On Saturdays children of all ages attend where they all receive a meat meal (usually goat stew) with green vegetables grown on our piece of land. Guardians of the children help grow the food and help prepare the meals. This is their main meal of the week.
(We support and assist the local people, we do not do it for them. We provide the materials for school buildings etc but the local people make the bricks and lay them.)
Our key-workers teach health and hygiene, HIV/AIDS awareness in the communities. They themselves are taught and supervised by our nurse who also provides medical care and advice. Health and morale has improved and the children have a structure to their day.
Hope Nurseries need puppets which they use for HIV/AIDS awareness and health and hygiene teaching.(They use a poor substitute for a puppet at the moment). When we received your email promising puppets we were just delighted, but when they arrived.......!!!
We were just amazed as we opened the box. The three life size puppets, the pelican, etc will meet such a need. Life size – and with trainers!
Clothes are usually donated andand shoes costly, trainers are not common for these little ones who live in the bush villages, they usually are barefooted and it is something special when secondhand trainers are handed out.
Your puppets will have such “street cred”! They will be a wonder to them.
The finger puppets are a real asset too as the children will enact the teaching that they have received, and the message really hits home.
We have found that they take the teaching back to their parents/guardians, and regularly remind them to wash their hands before handling food etc.
The work at our nurseries at Lemesi, Kayabwa, Thugwalugwa, and Chapsinja will be greatly assisted by your kind gifts. Usually teaching aids are toys that have been sent out in our annual container dispatch. The teachers will be so encouraged by your kindness.
The DVD will be great. They were just full of wonder when I presented the Parachute at Chapsinja village.
We showed them what fun they would have, but I am no expert and your DVD and the book that I purchased will open their eyes to the great benefits of the many activities that are available. The staff will be trained with the DVD and we aim to purchase parachutes for the other nurseries.
The parachute was a gift from the children of St Stephen's Playgroup in Rochester. They took home tubes of Smarties, ate them and then filled the tubes with coins. They were able to buy the parachute and some mosquito nets for their linked nursery school. It is good to see these little ones experiencing the joy of giving to others.
Malawi is known as “The Warm Heart of Africa”. Thank you all for your warm hearts for these needy children.
In Chichewa – Zikomo Kwambiri – thank you very much!!
Kind regards, Maggie Mitchell
Nursery Linking and Student Sponsorship Programme Director, Starfish Malawi
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