Umbwi Secondary School

Overcoming poverty through providing education 

How can you help?

With an initial £7,500 (US $9,600) donation, INTO Giving helped in building a new dormitory for 240 secondary school girls, whose previous accommodation saw them living without running water for showers, long-drop cess pit toilets, sleeping four across two beds pushed together, and an unlit mile walk home from school to their hostel.

Each year the project will benefit about 240 girls of secondary school age who are at a government boarding school in Dedza District, Malawi. The girls previously occupied a dilapidated, overcrowded building one kilometre from the school campus. It had only 10 outside toilets, ten shower cubicles for using a bucket of water and four outside sinks with a water supply for washing clothes and general use.

As of September 2019 the dormitory is officially OPEN! This now means that girls have accommodation at the school, and don't face the long walk back to a hostel at the end of the day.

We are very pleased to be granting an additional £5000 (US $6500) which will help put the finishing touches to the dormitories: adding school lockers, and a fresh lick of paint. 

With donations now totalling £12,500 (US $16,100) INTO Giving are supporting equal access to education for girls attending the Umbwi school. We are so proud of all that has been accomplished so far, and can't wait to see the finished dormitories in all their glory!

 

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Umbwi was originally a boy's school; in 1999, girls began attending it too. While there was a boys’ dormitory, girls have needed to live in an old hostel that was built to house migrant workers.  Today there are 240 girls and 300 boys.

The girls' hostel is overcrowded and verging on uninhabitable. Bunk beds are pulled into pairs and the girls sleep four across two mattresses. Mattresses and beds are in poor condition. There are four long-drop toilets and six that empty into a cess pit. The ten shower cubicles have no water supply. Girls draw a bucket of water from the sinks and take this to a cubicle to use for a shower wash. The girls can stay at the school to study until 8.30 in the evening, but then have to walk back to their hostel in the dark along an unlit dirt road.

 

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