Education Malawi Project #57634

Build a self-reliant community in rural Malawi!

by The Cove Collective

Build a self-reliant community in rural Malawi!

Project Report | Dec 6, 2024
Small wins for our community! We'll take 'em!

By Tamra Carlson | Co-founder

Chitende finally has running water!

Happy Holidays from Malawi!

This festive season, we wanted to extend our eternal gratitude for the support you've given us throughout the year. Thanks to you, our community has seen several significant wins over the past few months, and a few more down the pipeline!

First, the school feeding program has significantly contributed to the improved academic performance of learners. Particularly in Standard 8, where an impressive 98.12% of students have passed their national examination and have been selected to attend secondary schools. Compared to the previous results, this demonstrates an increase of 45.12% pass rate. This strongly suggests that the program has enhanced students' concentration, energy levels, and overall health, leading to better engagement in class and higher cognitive function.

Second, in coordination with our sister organization, The Cove Malawi, we've been able to provide the first tap in our community to supply improved, clean, drinking water. Previously, the only water source in our community was the lake, which is used for many other activities (washing, cleaning, fishing, etc.). The topography of the land surrounding our community made bringing a drilling rig out there next to impossible. So, we manually dug a well, to tap into the fresh, safe groundwater - which was no small task, digging 10 to 15 meters down into mostly large stones! The goal of this project is to eventually extend the piped water directly into the homes surrounding the well and provide a few more community taps for those homes that are too hard to reach geographically.

And lastly, even though we are about a "year behind schedule," if schedules are even a thing in Malawi, it seems the electricity project is about to finally come to fruition. Most of you who have been following us for a while know that from the beginning, our focus has always been on tackling the infrastructure problems within the community. Because having electricity in the community was THEIR top priority. Having electricity may seem frivolous to us in the developed world because we are used to it, but in the context of Malawi, it opens so many doors for every household. Children can study at night, parents can charge devices that help them in business, communities can connect with each other in ways that were otherwise unreachable, and many other personal benefits that cannot even begin to be categorized.

While we are incredibly proud of how far our little grassroots organization has come, how much we've tackled with very little overhead, we are looking towards 2025 to bring changes and growth to The Cove Collective. With your continued support, we'd love to grow our network of supporters. If we can manage to double our donations in 2025, we would be able to strengthen the lunch menu and amplify the support we provide to the school feeding program. We would be able to wire the remaining 15 homes on our list for power. And hopefully, we will be able to bring piped water into more homes in our community. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming year, we'd also love to be able to bring on one more new support staff to help implement our programs.

To say we are grateful for you is an understatement. We know there are so many nonprofits to donate to, also doing incredible work in their fields. By choosing The Cove Collective, you are supporting long-term, sustainable growth in our little corner of the world. You are allowing us to develop the long-standing relationships needed to truly understand the intricacies involved in development. And giving us the versatility to be able to shift priorities as the complexities of life throw us curve balls. So, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

Happy holidays filled with love and joy from Malawi!

Tamra Carlson & Zinyengo Kawonga

The well, manually dug!

The tank, 10,000 liters!

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Aug 8, 2024
Pachoko Pachoko! Slowly but Surely!

By Tamra Carlson | Co-founder

Hello Our Generous and Faithful Supporters!

Most of you who already know us, and a bit about Malawi, have heard us use the expression "Pachoko Pachoko" before. It’s a critical phrase to embrace when working in many parts of the world, but especially Malawi. It means slowly but surely, and it is a way of life, similar to our own phrase "slow and steady wins the race."

At the end of last year, we launched our project to bring power to our community and we had a lot of excitement and momentum for the first few months. This project is still well under way, however now we are stuck in the inevitable "hurry up and wait" phase. The community has enough homes wired to qualify for the governmental Rural Electrification Program, but now we wait for the government to come and deliver the power. In the meantime, as we wait, we'd like to continue wiring at least 15 more homes in our community, to increase the impact and hopefully give us some priority on the installation list.

Our school feeding program is also on a slow but steady pace. Malawi's economy has been on a dramatic downward trajectory this year, which has had a negative impact on pretty much every facet of daily lives in every home. Our school is struggling to supply enough teachers to keep exams scores high, but thanks to the feeding program, we have been able to keep attendance at record highs for the school. This relieves some of the economic household stress on families with children, so we take pride in the fact that we are still able to help our community in this way during an extremely hard time.

We'd like to extend our gratitude to you, our faithful supporters. We know in the nonprofit world that our supporters often look for quantitative data to evaluate their impact. While we recognize the importance in those numbers, we would also like to stress the importance of long-term support, support that is able to withstand the unpredictable nature of operating in a developing country. Because of you, we have been able to provide some stability in our community. Strengthening the resilience of our community has always been at the heart of our mission and we could not do it without you.

So, thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter and for your continued commitment to the work we are doing in Malawi!

Much love and gratitude!

Tamra Carlson & Zinyengo Kawonga

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Feb 21, 2024
Power is on the way!

By Tamra Carlson | Co-Founder

Greetings from northern Malawi!

As loyal supporters of The Cove Collective, we wanted to take this opportunity to express our extreme gratitude for your support. Thanks to your generosity, we've been able to launch one of our biggest and most impactful projects to date! Our Chitende Community Electricity Project is well under way and nearing completion!

In late 2023, we were notified by our local leaders and the Malawian government that our community was under consideration for the Malawi Rural Electrification Program (MREP). However, to qualify, our community needed to show their dedication to buying power by preemptively wiring their homes for electricity, in at least 40 households. With the sharply rising inflation and devaluation of the Malawian currency, this seemingly simple task is unattainable for most of the households in our rural community.

Our newly formed project is subsidizing the cost of wiring 40 homes, starting with the most vulnerable in our community, and will expand to serve more households as funds become available. Each household in the project is required to contribute about 20% of the required inputs for their home and the hookup fee which is charged by the power company. To date, we have been able to wire 27 homes thanks to your support! Almost 8 households in the community have managed to complete the wiring themselves, leaving us with just 5 more homes to wire to guarantee the government will hold true and bring the transformer. That translates to roughly another $1,000 of funds we need to raise to get the power on the way. But our list of families is still at 40, so if we can manage to raise a total of at least $2,600 more in donations, we will be able to really meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our community!

Having just spent the last month on the ground in Malawi, I can tell you firsthand that the excitement in the community is unlike any I've ever felt before. The doors that open for families when they have access to electricity are profound. It's the predecessor for economic empowerment, academic achievement, expanded business opportunities, overall quality of life improvements, as well as many other impactful developments.

Please take two minutes to view our video, linked below, to experience this joy and excitement in our community! Because you played a huge role in making this happen!

As always, thank you so much for your continued support and generosity. We sincerely believe in the power of community, in the many shapes and forms it comes in. And we consider you a huge part of ours, even if you may be far away.

Sending love and gratitude from our part of the world to yours,

Tamra Carlson & Zinyengo Kawonga

Links:

Hike through Chitende village: see the homes you've helped wire!

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