Malawi
What We Provide:
WCF supports Malawi Sarah’s Kids Scholarship Program.
- Tuition Fees
- Food
- Uniforms and Shoes
How We Help
WCF has been working with Sarah’s Kids almost since its inception in 2014 through former WCF board member Holly Dunlap.
WCF has been involved in Malawi since 2007, primarily sending mobile Medical teams and Business Training Teams to many different parts of Malawi.
Background
Malawi has many children who have been abandoned and forced to live on the streets due to poverty, derelict or deceased parents, abusive families, escape from slavery, or escape from childhood marriage. Samaritan Trust Shelter for Street Kids provides a place for these children to sleep, two meals a day, and help to resume their education in local government schools.
While volunteering at Samaritan Trust over the course of many years, Sarah Adams found that the most vulnerable children from the shelter were not succeeding in school. Local government schools were often overcrowded, with as many as 100 students per teacher, so children were not able to get the attention they needed to learn, let alone catch up in school.
As a result, Sarah set up a sponsorship program for “Sarah’s Kids” in order for the most at-risk kids to attend local private schools where the student/teacher ratio is often 20/1, and the kids get the supplementary assistance they need to continue their education confidently.
By providing all of these kids with a private education, they are much more likely to finish school, and to be eligible for college. Even having just a high school diploma puts them in the top 12% of Malawians in the job market, and helps eliminate the risk for slavery or prostitution.
This project focuses on providing the funding needed to cover the annual tuition, school and nutrition related expenses for the students currently in the program.
In addition, we do Home Based Care with some of the children’s siblings who are still living at home but do not have access to proper nutrition or education. We do this by bringing the family food parcels on a regular basis, and by administering school funds directly to their schools.
WCF History In The Country
In Malawi, 52.4% of the population lives below the poverty line, and 61% of the population lives on less than $1.25/day. Limited connectivity to the region and the rest of the world and poor health and educational systems severely limit labor productivity. Agricultural productivity has been severely impacted by flooding and drought conditions. High inflation rates (21.9% in 2015) and the devaluation of the local currency have caused economic instability and hardship for the average Malawian.
WCF partnered with former Board Director Holly Dunlap to support a Sponsorship Program called ‘Sarah’s Kids’, named after Sarah Adams who had been supporting vulnerable children in a shelter in Blantyre. This program is ongoing.
Since 2007, WCF mobilized Medical and Job Skills Training Teams to Malawi. More than 4,500 patients had been treated by our Medical Teams. More than 400 participants attended our Skills and Business Training Seminars.
WCF launched its first Medical Life Center in Malawi in 2016 where we treated 2,000 patients until we handed over operations and oversight to our local partner in 2018.