In May 2022, we had the great opportunity to travel to Malawi to visit our partner organization Bambino Foundation (BF), and to be able to meet with our partner’s team, visit five community schools, and converse with teachers, school committees, and parent-teacher associations.

To date, BF is working with 96 preschools, 8 of which also offer primary education, 244 teachers including 176 women, and 5,938 students. In order to establish and sustain the community schools, BF carries out: comprehensive teacher training, curriculum development, capacity building for parent-teacher associations/school committees, a school feeding program that provides school children with a meal through vegetable gardens, and a women’s empowerment program that raises awareness in communities on the importance of girls’ education, among others.

Our project manager Luna Congo and the Bambino Foundation national and regional staff.

Visit to the Bambino Foundation office.

In this article, we share with you three strengths of our partner organization that we observed during the visit: 1. the ownership of the schools by the communities, 2. the quality of the education provided, and 3. the fruitful collaboration established with the government.

1. The community ownership of the schools

Whenever BF assists in the creation of a school, the first step is to sensitize the community to the importance of education for the younger generations and to the community’s responsibility to meet this need. The establishment of a school is therefore accompanied by the creation of a parent-teacher association that ensures the involvement of the community in the smooth running of the school.

Meeting with the Parent-Teacher Association of Mtchaya Nursery School.

Throughout the visit, we were able to talk with several members of the PTAs, who shared their efforts to organize consultation meetings with the community in order to find solutions to the various challenges facing the school: finding a location to build a school building, ensuring the payment of teachers’ salaries, preventing children from leaving the school during harvest time, raising funds to improve the facilities around the school… 

Meeting with members of the management committee and the parent-teacher association of Kapeska Junior Primary School.

In one of the schools visited, the PTA told the story of how, with the support of the village members, they were able to secure the construction of the school. Today, the community continues to support the development of the community school by paying the teachers and providing maize that the parents take turns cooking for the children.

In another case, we were able to see the small plot of land provided by one of the school’s teachers, where corn, groundnuts and soybeans are grown and used to prepare porridge for the children.

The Thiwi Community School plot.

These meetings with the schools’ parent-teacher associations highlighted the fact that, even though some schools face challenges, the existence of these committees that consult together to find solutions, with the support of BF, ensures the sustainability of efforts. The awareness that the school belongs to the community and that the community is responsible for its development was present in all the communities visited.

2. The quality of the education provided

The second strong point that emerged repeatedly during the visit was the satisfaction of the parents of the children attending the community schools with the quality of the education provided, both intellectually and morally, thanks to the teacher training provided by BF. The pre-school education lays a solid foundation that allows the children to perform very well when they enter primary school.

Children and teachers in action at the Future Nursery School.

One of the school committees shared that the village is happy to have this community school because before it existed, children could only start schooling around 7-8 years old when they were able to walk long distances to the nearest schools. Now that they have a school in their community, children can enter school much earlier.

Thiwi Community School.

In two of the five schools visited, in addition to the preschool education they offer in the morning, teachers offer additional primary-level classes to children who attend the nearby elementary school in the afternoons, allowing them to go further in their learning.

3. A fruitful collaboration with the government

Finally, the last highlight of this visit was BF’s collaboration with the government to strengthen access to quality education in Malawi.

In some cases, community preschools have a partnership with the neighboring government elementary school, whereby no child from the surrounding area can enter elementary school without a certificate of completion of the preschool level provided by the community school.

Bvivi Chinzeze School.

In other cases, schools operate in direct partnership with the government, as is the case with Kapeska Junior Primary School. Initially established by Bambino Foundation as a preschool, it now offers primary education, and three teachers are trained and paid by the government while three others are volunteers trained by BF and receive tuition paid by the community. The government appreciates the teacher training program that BF uses, and during the visit, the school director expressed a desire that government teachers also receive some of the training offered by BF.

Kapeska Junior Primary School.

We are grateful to have BF as a partner and look forward to continuing to work together throughout our 2022-2026 framework agreement! Many thanks to the Bambino Foundation teams for their warm welcome, and see you soon!