Some of you may recall that last year, we ran this Raise for Maize emergency fundraising campaign to raise money for food to sustain the students of Dwankhozi Community School during the community’s “Hungry Period.” Well, it’s time to do it again and together, we can do this! We have a jump on the season this time, but the urgency remains the same!

Click here to contribute.

In rural southern Africa, the Hungry Period (January-March) is when you are lucky to eat one meal a day. That one meal is Nshima, a thick paste cooked from Maize meal, with cooked down pumpkin leaves. It might not sound mouth-watering … but it fills them up … and they are grateful for it.

As subsistence farmers, this season is one that rural Africans have to endure every year. Their stored food is depleted as they wait for the rainy season to end and the March harvest to be ready. That means their children are coming to school hungry. Very hungry. It makes learning difficult. The school day has to be shortened during this period. The mango fruit season (the only breakfast option) has also just ended. They have absolutely no energy to learn.

But, again this year, as we did last year, we have an opportunity to help …

Women in the community are willing to make the students Nshima at Dwankhozi Community School. (Pictured, left) This is a community of people who care deeply about their school and want to help. So we have the built-in labor to make the food, students eager to learn and teachers always ready to teach … they just need us to help buy them some maize. When we’re able to provide this nutritious meal during the school day for the duration of this tough season, school attendance remains high and the students’ and teachers’ momentum for learning is sustained. It’s a matter of health and of hope.

$10 feeds 60 students for one day.

$100 feeds the entire school for one day.

They only need to be fed for 6 weeks (30 school days.)

That’s $3,000.

To keep 600 students learning.

Let’s do this. We did it last year in one week – and we know we can do it again!

Every penny we raise here will go towards the purchase of food for Dwankhozi Basic School.

Today was yet another full day.  We woke up early to get a head start and didn’t get to bed until after midnight.  It’s exciting work but our time here is limited and there is so much to get done, every moment is precious.  We started the day with more computer training for the teachers focusing on email and other computer applications.  Brad, Mark & Bertha are great instructors and the teachers and students are quick learners.  They have picked up these skills naturally.  While the classes were going on, I spent some time with the kids.  Grade 4 students received letters from the students at Queen Anne Elementary School, so they spent time writing them back to become real pen pals – so cool!  (check out the video)

Once we got the projector and Internet working, we showed the students the three films that Aly Schoonover made during the last visit with Kate Ballbach & Kirk Piper.  This was the first time the kids have ever seen anything on a big screen, let alone a video with them or their friends in it.  Their eyes were glued and there were many audible ‘ooohs and ahhhs’.  It was emotional for me to see.  After the videos I had the opportunity to talk to the kids a bit about being sponsored – encouraging them to work hard at school and we would commit to supporting them to give them a hope for a future.  They seemed to be touched by the idea that they would be known and that people believed in them and their dreams.  (hear their reactions on this video)

We met with the Ministry of Education, the Chiptata Rotary and the Ministry of Health earlier in the day.  After 6 years of being involved with this community, we have built a trust with the government.  They have seen NGOs come and go – but they see that we have invested in Dwankhozi and are here to stay.   They are very excited about our public/private partnership and are willing to help in any way they can.  They want to work with us towards the common goal of providing these wonderful children an education and giving them hope for a brighter future.

This trip has been amazing on so many levels.  It’s so hard to communicate everything, just know that we have been blessed by this experience and we could not have accomplished this work without your partnership and support.  There is so much still to be done but each trip is a reminder of how much we have grown and how much potential there is for future progress.  We look forward to what’s next and to you joining us on this journey.  Stay tuned for a few more updates before our departure.

Stay blessed,

Matt, Mark & Brad

We arrived safely in Malawi on Friday, and were greeted by our friends from Dwankhozi.  After a wonderful meal, we set off for the six-hour drive to Namitembo, in rural Malawi. Leaving close to sunset made for quite an interesting journey – it’s not easy to find a rural school down a dirt road, in pitch darkness, without ‘google’ maps.

Traveling to Namitembo were Brad, Mark & myself, along with our Project Manager, Moses Masala, and the PTA Chairman from Dwankhozi Community School (DCS), Godfrey, who is a local farmer from Dwankhozi. Our purpose was to visit a Parish school that we had heard about from some friends in the states, establish connections, and learn how they have developed a trade school and agriculture program.

Our host Father Philip greeted us in the morning with breakfast and an insightful tour of their facilities – specifically their agriculture project and trade school. We were so impressed with their accomplishments that we hope to emulate both of these initiatives at DCS in the near future.

One of the most interesting things we learned about their agriculture program is inter-cropping. It’s a technique where you intersperse nitrogen-producing crops such as chickpeas and groundnuts, with staple crops such as maize along with a nitrogen-producing shrub call gliricidia. Yields have increased three-fold and they have enough food for the hungry season. With Godfrey’s help along with other local farmers, we hope to bring this technique to DCS.  We believe this can provide enough food during the hungry season to feed the kids, which was an issue we discovered during our last visit.

The trade school focuses on teaching brick building and carpentry.    Because so few students at DCS are able to go to high school or college, providing them with a trade will enable them to earn a living.  Building a trade school is now on our list of future projects.

Thanks for your continued support throughout our journey.  This is only the beginning – we have so much more to look forward to.

Blessings,

Matt

“I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Wait for the Lord and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.”                                          –Psalm 27:13-14

We are all very excited to begin our trip to Africa. But there is a lot of waiting! It’s an eight-day adventure but it takes four full days to get there and back.  As we prepare to leave we can sense the spirit going before us, paving our journey and providing our way.

Please pray:

• for safe travel, protection from sickness and lots of rest.
• that we can let go of all of the logistics, all of the arrangements and all of our anxieties and instead open our eyes and ears to see what God has for us on our journey.
• for our kids and wives back home. While we are having fun seeing the Lord’s hand at work on the other side of the world, they have made it possible for us to go.
• for the kids and families of Dwankhozi.

Last night we prayed for rain for the farmers of the Midwest USA and it rained today!  I have heard that the farmers we will visit in Malawi and Zambia are also struggling with drought. We pray for rain, that the Lord might stretch out his hand and provide nourishing rain to the soil and the people who depend upon Him.

Pray for the children at the school who have been diligently studying amidst the heat, the hunger and malaria. We pray that our visit might renew their spirit and their determination!  Pray also for the teachers and community leaders who have been laboring to keep the school alive. May God continue to sustain them.

We hope to keep communicating throughout our trip. For updates on our travels, please sign up for the Dwankhozi Hope blog by completing the Subscribe to Blog section located on our Programs page.

Please also check out these short videos to learn more about Dwankhozi
Hope School:  Meet Martin, Give a Kindle, Sponsor a Student.

Blessings.

Mark Russo, Brad MacLean & Matt MacLean

Martin in class

We’ve been especially inspired recently by our latest donor story about two young boys, strangers to one another, but who nevertheless have intersected with one another’s hearts and hopes across oceans and vast continents. Jack is a first grader at Queen Anne Elementary in Seattle, WA and many of you have “met” Dwankhozi Community School student, Martin (pictured right), through the video (click to view) we recently shared with all of you on our website.  Jack’s mom, Katie, a teacher at Queen Anne Elementary, brought Jack to our video release event this past year. We recently sat down with the two of them for a little visit and to ask Jack to tell us more about his story.

Jack and Katie had talked about Dwankhozi Hope long before they attended the video release event, but he said it hadn’t really captured his interest – until he saw Martin’s story that evening. He couldn’t stop thinking about it and talking about it, watching the video many more times after the event.  It wasn’t long before an idea began to take shape. Jack’s seventh birthday was coming up. Instead of getting presents from his friends, he could ask them to bring donations for Martin and his friends at DCS. “It was a hard decision,” he said, nodding his head seriously, “but, then…,” he shrugged and nodded again, “I just decided.” And that was that. Katie shared Jack’s plans with us and we went straight to work, braiding Zambian cloth bracelets for party favors. It was a sort of meditation of gratitude and humility as we made those bracelets, recalling what it was like to turn seven and imagining the gravity of the decision to forego the excitement and significance of receiving birthday gifts at that age.

Invitations for the party went out, giving the choice for his friends to bring a gift or to choose to bring a donation. Martin’s video was played for his classmates. A large glass jar was decorated with photos of Martin and the school, balloons were attached to the jar and rocks from the family’s garden kept the empty jar from floating away as they waited for the guests to arrive at the park for Jack’s celebration day. Every single friend chose to bring a donation for Martin and they raised over $400.00 that day. Coming home from the party, Jack was clasping the jar in the back seat, “I feel so good,” he told his parents, “Grown up.” Jack’s teachers and principal recognized his philanthropic undertaking during the school’s morning assembly a few weeks ago where Jack presented Matt MacLean of Dwankhozi Hope with his donation jar (pictured below).

Thank you, Jack!

Matt and Jack had a chance to discuss where Jack wanted the donation to be put to use, and, as an avid soccer player and fan he was excited to hear that this was a passion he shared with the kids of DCS. His donation will be used to maintain the school’s soccer supplies and uniforms.

There is something incredibly moving and inspiring about a child who has experienced that he is absolutely able to make a significant difference for others in the world. Jack and his mom are already thinking about how he and his friends at Queen Anne Elementary can begin to create even more meaningful relationships and interactions with Martin and all the kids of DCS – perhaps as pen-pals or via some kind of learning exchange between schools. And he has some ideas about that glass donation jar, too! He’s suggested that it could be made available to any other kids who might want to find a way to make a difference too – a sort of “Follow the Jar” kids-to-kids program. To Jack and to all his friends who joined him in the fundraiser, we want to express our deep gratitude! You are an example and an inspiration to all of us. We are so proud to count each of you as partners in this amazing, international community-building journey we’re taking together!