Temwa - Sustainable Community Development, Malawi

Tuesday, 18 December 2007 00:00

The Temwa Schools magazine, which was created in conjunction with an organisation called Young Bristol, recently had its second outing, this time to an Africa Day at Chipping Sodbury school on Monday December 3rd.

Organised by Chipping Sodbury school’s citizenship teacher, Darren Bond, the Africa Day at the school involved all the pupils in year 9 taking part in a day of lessons and activities to help them learn a little more about Africa including its history, its perception in the media, its problems and the positive and negative work that charities carry out. Organisations such as ourselves and African Initiatives were invited to help give lessons and a pivotal part of the day involved trying to help the children make links with school children in Africa as well as encouraging them to make a positive contribution towards Africa through the planning of some fundraising ideas.

Temwa had been invited to use the Schools Magazine (for more information about the magazine see previous news article) and take a lesson on the positive and negative roles of charities in Africa with special focus on Temwa’s work in Malawi. We were also asked to help start the process of twinning the Chipping Sodbury school with a school in Malawi as well as helping the children plan a fundraising event to benefit the schools in Usisya. Representing Temwa on the day was Temwa volunteer, Tom Blower, who helped create the Schools Magazine and our UK Project Administrator, Dan Lewin.

The day was a huge success and the magazine worked really well in the first lesson on charities in Africa as a tool to help gets the kids engaged with some of the issues surrounding Africa and Malawi in particular. The kids all seemed very interested to learn about Temwa’s work in Malawi and although it is difficult to know how much information is absorbed, the pupils carried out the exercises in the magazine to a very high standard showing that they had gained a good grounding in the problems Africa faces and how sustainable development projects like Temwa’s in Malawi are helping sow the seeds of a healthier and more prosperous future.

For the second lesson, Tom and Dan used the magazine’s ‘Fundraising’ section to help children plan their own fundraising event for Temwa to make a positive contribution to Africa. The kids came up with some great ideas during this session including holding a fashion show and running a sports and activities day. These ideas will be followed up by the teachers in the coming weeks who will provide help and encouragement to the kids to enable them to carry out an event sometime during the school year ahead. During this class some of the pupils also used the ‘What is life like at…’ section of the magazine to help them write letters to children in a school out in Malawi. These letters will be delivered to a school in Usisya by Tom Blower, who is travelling to Malawi over Christmas to further his schools work with schools in Malawi. Tom will then bring back correspondent letters from children out in Usisya and deliver them back to the students at Chipping Sodbury school.

Temwa would like to thank Darren Bond for organising the day and all the year 9 pupils for taking part so enthusiastically.

Tom Blower at Chipping Sodbury School