Support school costs for children in rural Malawi

Blessings (pictured above) is a promising student currently in her second year of secondary school in Neno District, one of the poorest districts in Malawi.

Blessings herself comes from a family that has weathered tremendous financial hardship. Her father’s sudden death left her mother and grandmother to care for Blessings and her three siblings with no consistent means of earning income. The POSER program has supported Blessings’ education for the past four years.

“Without the POSER program, I would not have been able to continue school. My family is so vulnerable, there is no way they would have been able to pay school fees or get scholastic materials.” This year, POSER has covered school fees and provided critical scholastic materials (including pens, books, and mathematical instruments) to 295 secondary school students in Neno District, making it possible for students like Blessings to continue their education. Budgetary constraints in previous years had made it impossible to provide school uniforms, but this year POSER resumed providing school uniforms to secondary school students as well. Not only do uniforms serve to reduce the distraction of class-consciousness in school, but they are, in fact, required for attendance in Malawi. The POSER program is proud to help remove this barrier to education and to help more students stay in school.  

The POSER program invests similarly in younger students, supporting just over 1,900 primary school students in Neno District this academic year with the supplies necessary in order to attend school and participate fully in lessons, including exercise books and pens.

For the first time in the POSER Program’s history, more female students are being supported in primary school than male students. This is a heartening accomplishment given that encouraging women’s education remains an organizational priority. 

“It’s important,” Blessings says, “that everyone either male or female should be given an equal opportunity to attain education.” Though she speaks with the confidence of a future stateswoman, Blessings insists that she aspires to be a doctor. Her favorite subjects include mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology, and she hopes to return to Neno after her studies to work as a physician. “Doctors help patients and they are very important in their community,” she explains. “I would like to work in Neno so that more girls from Neno have a role model to encourage them to go to school.” Echoing her mom and grandmother’s commitment to her education, Blessings emphasizes, “it’s a pity that so many girls drop out of school. They should know this chance only comes once in your lifetime. They should work hard and keep in mind what the future can hold.”

Hello! Thank you for continuing to support PIH and the Program on Social and Economic Rights (POSER), which aims to break cycles of poverty in rural Malawi. We're happy to share this story, provided to us by the POSER team, about POSER's impact on Malawi's youth:

Before we can thank Yamikani for taking the time to visit us after school, he has already thanked us for the support the POSER program has provided to him and his family.

Yamikani, who is 20, has been raised for the past eighteen years by a single mom. His father abandoned the family eighteen years ago, leaving his mother with only a small plot of corn and tomatoes and sporadic odd jobs to feed him and his three younger siblings.

Despite this challenging financial situation at home, Yamikani completed primary school. When it came time to proceed to secondary school, Yamikani began receiving financial support from the POSER school program. POSER has paid Yamikani’s annual tuition and exam fees for the past three years, alleviating the financial burden of education on his household and making it possible for him to continue his studies.

“Without the POSER program,” he said, “continuing my education would have been very, very difficult, because of the number of children my mother is caring for.” He hopes that his two younger siblings, who are not yet old enough for school, will be able to receive support through the POSER program and that they will be able to go far in their education.

As for Yamikani, he enjoys studying math, physical sciences and biology, and hopes to pass the exam to enter University later this year. “I want to become a doctor,” he said, explaining how he has admired the work of doctors in his home district of Neno where PIH operates. “There are so many people here who are so vulnerable. My relatives. My friends. They are all being cared for by these doctors, and I would like to one day be able to provide this care as well.” 

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