AGE Africa is pleased to report that we added 3 new schools to our scholarship program at the end of 2013, bringing us to a total of
As AGE Africa continues to grow in 2014, we have set a goal of providing 170 scholarships to forever change the lives of 170 girls living in poverty in rural Malawi!
We also recognize that our opportunity for systemic change lies with our unique life skills and career guidance curriculum which is high-impact but low-cost to implement. In conjunction with Malawi’s Ministry of Education, we have launched an initiative in 2014, called GirlsCHAT, that pilots our CHATS (Creating Healthy Approaches to Success) curriculum at 6 rural, community day secondary schools in Zomba and Machinga Districts. GirlsCHAT offers AGE Africa’s two-year life skills and career guidance curriculum to over 400 girls. Rigorous monitoring and evaluation of the GirlsCHAT pilot will provide an evidence base to build scale and influence the national curriculum review and reform process through advocacy for a more equitable and girl-friendly life-skills curriculum nationwide.
On September 7th, 2013, 38 athletes, humanitarians, and friends honored our girls who walk a triathlon-sized distance every week just to attend school by participating in the Nations Triathlon on behalf of AGE Africa. Together, the Tri for Malawi Team has raised over $112,000 – An incredible $12,000 over our original goal! For the first time in Tri for Malawi history we have reached – and surpassed – goal by Race Day. Also new this year, were the Ambassador from the Republic of Malawi to the United States, His Excellency Steven Matenje, and the Deputy Chief of Mission, Jane Nankwenya, who joined the festivities and swam, biked, and ran with their Embassy Team. A huge thank you to all of our extraordinary athletes, donors, and our first-ever corporate partner, Team Ashmore, for helping to realize our goal and providing 150 scholarships to needy girls this fall! For more information or to join the Tri for Malawi Team Challenge 2014, please email triathlon@ageafrica.org.
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This is Brenda. Brenda is a current AGE Africa scholar at Mulunguzi Secondary School who overcame many hurdles to get her education. When she started secondary school, her family was unable to pay her school fees and it wasn't until her brother spoke with the Head of Mulunguzi that she was able to find AGE and continue her education. Brenda's journey to education is remarkable, and strikingly similar to many of our AGE Africa scholars, but what sets her apart is her well-spoken dedication to others. She has personal goals such as becoming a doctor, or perhaps a journalist, but regardless of which career she chooses, she has a few ultimate goals: to help her parents, relatives, friends and many more! In her own words:
"If God is going to continue to bless me and help me acheive my goals, I want to help others, eg. orphans, elderly people, people with disabilities and many others. I want to do this because I see the importance of helping others as AGE helped me to be where I am."
We see Brenda as such an inspiration! In our leadership curriculum, we help our scholars to see that they are role models in their communities and that they have the unique opportunity to make a difference by piloting village-based girls clubs, mentoring other girls and being an approachable leader--Brenda is well on her way to doing all of these things!
Brenda and many of our other scholars and alumnae also frequently express that they would like AGE Africa to continue doing what we're doing and to help as many girls as possible. We're listening! As we ask our scholars to serve as leaders and give back to their communities, we're also trying to support more girls.
This year, with the help of an amazing 2013 Tri for Malawi Team, we're aiming to raise 100K to directly support 140 Malawian Girls getting their secondary education. That's 140 new opportunities for community leadership, 140 lives changed forever, 140 students who can follow in the footsteps of our current students and alumnae like Brenda, Mary and Lesenia.
Since January of this year, AGE Africa has been supporting 120 students with secondary school scholarships and providing support for hundreds of others with our life skills and career guidance curriculum. Having 120 students means that we succeeded. We are able to help more young women than ever before and we hope to see that number grow by year end. However, as much as we like to celebrate overall success, we encourage our student to celebrate individual successes and to support each other. We'd like to take this opportunity to share with you some of our students individual successes because, as we teach in our life skills program, "together we aspire, together we achieve." For example:
AGE Scholars have achieved a lot collectively in the past year as well. Just before graduation time, AGE discovered that 100% of our boarding school students passed their MSCE's (exit exams)! On October 11th, they coordinated and participated in an event for International Day of the Girl, raising awareness in their communities and nationwide. AGE Program Assistant Mphatso Zidana was featured on Good Morning Malawi, and village chiefs, Ministery of Education officials and reporters watched the girls perform skits about girls' empowerment, facilitate workshops on healthy decision making and gave testimonials about pursuing higher education.
The many successes we have enjoyed in the past few months prove that scholarships, career guidance and life skills training are an unbeatable combination in helping change the future of girls in Malawi and worldwide, and it is for this reason that we are aiming to increase our number of scholarships to 140 by the end of 2013!
With the help of 21 triathletes running for our cause, multitudes of donors and a lot of heart, AGE Africa was able to raise enough to support scholarships, career guidance and life skills training for 120 young Malawian girls. Many of these girls come from schools that are new to AGE Africa, Thuchila Day Schooli and St. Mary's Girls Boarding School and we are very excited to be expanding out partnerships with different schools. Scholarships are imperative in making secondary education possible, covering both the obvious and the hidden costs of education. Being able to provide scholarships for these 120 girls is a massive success because investing in them creates 120 new leaders and role models for other young girls in Malawi.
Part of their leadership development lies in the career guidance and life skills curriculum that AGE Africa provides to supplement classroom learning and we are thrilled to say that beyond the 120 girls we are supporting with scholarships, we are able to support over 300 more with career guidance and life skills training alone. Recent data collected in our alumnae survey suggests that our supplementary curriculum has been very effective in helping AGE Alumnae make informed decisions about their future. For example, AGE Alumnae wait an average of three years longer than the Malawian national average to get married and have children. Even more impressively, 100% of AGE Alumnae said that since learning with AGE Africa, they would "stand up to a man who tried to hurt them."
We now have 120 girls supported by scholarships, and an even greater number of blossoming leaders who are on their way to becoming AGE Alumnae standing up for themselves, making informed and responsible decisions, and making positive changes in their lives! Many of them have younger siblings, such as Aswema (pictured) who is already helping her younger siblings work hard for their education.
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