The Malawi Project
- Pardon our mess this page under construction -
Malawi is located in south central Africa and is known as the "Warm Heart of Africa," which a traveler will pick up on quickly as they are greeted everywhere with warm smiles, the local handshake and the local greeting "mu-li bwan-gi?" which means, how are you?" To which the visitor will be taught to reply cheerfully "N-dil-i bwin-O!" which means, I am fine. It has been this very sincere welcoming feeling that brought BTV back to Malawi over several years to serve at the Sankahani Village Government School located not far from the capital city of Lilongwe. The school campus had fallen into great disrepair over many years. Then through friends at a church in Columbia, Missouri BTCV was introduced to a Malawian community activist the Rev. Lawrence Benedicto who lives and serves in the village. Over a several year period BTCV would send volunteer teams to add infrastructure and restore existing infrastructure at the Sankahani Village School which provides education opportunities for students in over 30 villages and sub villages.
In 2011, BTCV sent the first team of volunteers to Malawi to serve at the Sankahani Village School. The team was tasked with completing a brand new library building. Over a two week period the team worked with a local professional builder to construct the new building.
During the team's time serving the BTCV leadership looked at the 5 double classroom buildings that were in serious disrepair on campus. In addition to the classrooms hundreds of government issued desks were nearly all broken from years of crowded classroom use. This caused most students to spend the school day sitting on the floor. Stepping back we know that this project helped our leadership determine that as an organization that we needed to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying issues related to education in order to create the most effective outcomes of our mission before even sending teams.
Over the next several years BTCV would evaluate each phase of the project in advance and in addition leadership would interview parents, teachers, students and local leadership to determine the greatest needs that could be addressed with infrastructure and equipment.
Future teams would complete renovations on classroom blocks that included new roofs, repairing concrete ground gutters, windows, doors, paint and chalkboards.
One of the largest undertakings was the refurbishment of hundreds of desks. Volunteer teams would gather all of the broken desks on campus and all of the good desks on campus and organize them in to groups of repair level. In the end hundreds of desks were repaired and refurbished for the students.
One day when a BTCV was team was working a young student named Sam Sonjola wheeled onto campus in his wheelchair. Volunteers witnessed other students picking up Sam's chair and carrying him into a classroom. BTCV would learn that there were more students in wheelchairs not attending school because of the difficulty and embarrassment of getting into classrooms this way. In order to address this BTCV added wheelchair ramps to every building on campus.
In 2016 the community with the government of Malawi constructed new latrines and teacher housing on Campus.
The work in at the Sankahani Village School concluded in 2017 and BTCV is proud to have been part of the man great developments on this campus.
During the team's time serving the BTCV leadership looked at the 5 double classroom buildings that were in serious disrepair on campus. In addition to the classrooms hundreds of government issued desks were nearly all broken from years of crowded classroom use. This caused most students to spend the school day sitting on the floor. Stepping back we know that this project helped our leadership determine that as an organization that we needed to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying issues related to education in order to create the most effective outcomes of our mission before even sending teams.
Over the next several years BTCV would evaluate each phase of the project in advance and in addition leadership would interview parents, teachers, students and local leadership to determine the greatest needs that could be addressed with infrastructure and equipment.
Future teams would complete renovations on classroom blocks that included new roofs, repairing concrete ground gutters, windows, doors, paint and chalkboards.
One of the largest undertakings was the refurbishment of hundreds of desks. Volunteer teams would gather all of the broken desks on campus and all of the good desks on campus and organize them in to groups of repair level. In the end hundreds of desks were repaired and refurbished for the students.
One day when a BTCV was team was working a young student named Sam Sonjola wheeled onto campus in his wheelchair. Volunteers witnessed other students picking up Sam's chair and carrying him into a classroom. BTCV would learn that there were more students in wheelchairs not attending school because of the difficulty and embarrassment of getting into classrooms this way. In order to address this BTCV added wheelchair ramps to every building on campus.
In 2016 the community with the government of Malawi constructed new latrines and teacher housing on Campus.
The work in at the Sankahani Village School concluded in 2017 and BTCV is proud to have been part of the man great developments on this campus.
