It’s nearly Christmas, and this is the last week of our 12 Weeks of Christmas stories. If you want to make a difference to people’s lives in Malawi, why don’t you buy a Christmas gift from our Christmas Gift Catalogue.
A generous gift of £313 could pay the salary of a teacher like Sylvia for six months
Sylvia Chiyaka is a teacher at Mazembe Primary School. Sylvia is 29, is married to Joseph and has three children.
RIPPLE Africa pays Sylvia’s salary. Before the school employed her, she had no job despite having finished secondary school with good grades, and the family struggled to make ends meet on only Joseph’s salary.
Her employment has made a huge difference not only to her family who now have a more secure financial future, but also to the pupils at Mazembe Primary School who are now benefitting from a better pupil teacher ratio.
Class size makes a real difference to educational attainment amongst younger pupils. Primary education in Malawi is provided by the government but government schools are under-funded and many are unable to afford enough teaching staff.
The goal of the Malawian government is for a ratio of 60 pupils to each teacher, but there are many classes of over 100 pupils and one in a school that we support has 135 pupils in a class – imagine trying to learn when there are 134 other pupils in your class trying to get the teacher’s attention!
RIPPLE Africa is helping by paying for 15 additional Malawian trainee teachers and providing teacher training opportunities for them. Our overseas volunteers also provide valuable help in the classroom as volunteer teaching assistants. We are keen to increase the numbers of teachers that we are funding and are actively fundraising to enable us to do this and ensure that class sizes are reduced. We also pay the monthly salaries of 24 pre-school teachers at the eight pre-schools that we manage which are not funded by the government at all.
We need your help so that we can employ more teachers like Sylvia – your gift will help us to provide more amazing teachers to give young children the best possible start in life!
On behalf of parents, teachers and children in Malawi, we’d like to say Thank You for taking the time to read about one of our education projects.
Tawonga Ukongwa!
