This winter, please give the life-changing gift of reading, writing and counting…
Schools in Malawi are in a desperate situation. There are students in classes with up to 200 other children. They have no books, no desks and no chairs. Children like Mphatso are in danger of not learning, dropping out of school and into a life of poverty.
Primary education has been free in Malawi since 1994, but the cost of uniform, shoes and notebooks are still too much for many families. Malawi has the fourth highest percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the world, and over half the population is considered extremely poor.1
For too many children, their experience of school is sitting on the bare concrete floor with no books and pens to use, and they have no electricity or running water. With one teacher to as many as 200 children in a class, it’s impossible to give a child the one-on-one support they need.
As a result, many children struggle to learn to read, write and count, and then drop out of school altogether.
Due to the dire conditions in his classroom, Mphatso, 14, stopped going to school. He doesn’t have a uniform, a pen or paper for class. His family live in extreme poverty in rural Malawi and his parents had to drop out of school at a young age.
Without an education, Mphatso was in real danger of being swept into the same cycle of poverty as his family before him.
When I didn’t go to school, I didn’t like it because my friends were learning, and I wasn’t.”
Thanks to VSO’s pioneering education project, children in many schools in Malawi have been given educational tablets.
They teach them how to read, write and count. The children leave their classrooms for an hour and sit in the VSO learning centre, where they can focus on the lessons on the tablet.
Not only are they learning at an accelerated level, they’re also confident and excited about going to school. The tablets are changing children’s lives.
Now, Mphatso is back in school and he’s attending every day. He can read, write and count and it’s all thanks to the technology VSO is sharing with schools in Malawi.
We need to reach more children. VSO has an ambitious plan to provide tablets to 5,000 more schools in Malawi. Will you help?
Please, donate today, and help us give more children a better future.