News & Events
St Maurice's High School Youth SVP group assist with school site clearing in Malawi
A Youth SVP group from St Maurice's High School, Cumbernauld paid a visit to Malawi earlier this year to help clear a site ready for the building of a new secondary school for girls in the north of the country. The group were responding to a request from Jane Chesney, a retired school teacher from St Margaret's Secondary in Airdaire, who has been in Malawi since 2004 promoting girl's education. The unexpected trip was not supposed to have been taking place until 2008 but the conference was quick to respond to the request for assistance from Ms Chesney.
The group of 5 students, led by Dominic Sutherland and his wife Ann-Marie (pictured right), presented the head teacher of Nkhamenya Girls Secondary School with a gift of £1500. The conference, which had linked to the school via Jane Chesney, had previously encouraged the girls of Nkhamenya to set up their own SSVP group by sending them formation guides to help them set up their meetings and activities. They were able to see the fruit of this by visiting the school's SSVP meeting and by accompanying them to the local mission hospital, where they provided soap and other hygiene materials to mothers with children on the malnutrition unit and also assisted with the cleaning of the ward attached to that unit (pictured below left).
In addition to helping with the site clearance and meeting the girls of Nkhamenya to promote further educational and cultural links between the two schools, the group also carried out an inspection of the area surrounding the Nkhamenya girl's school with the intention of bring back survey details in preparation of improving the water supply to the school next year. They were also able to find out how money donated to the school the previous year had been used improve the school environment, which included repairs to the lecture theatre roof and a new water bore hole. The SSVP conference from St Maurice's also explored the possibility of establishing extra curricular links with Nkhamenya and assisted the school with the cataloguing of educational materials (below right).
The trip, which ended with visiting an Ordination in Karonga and a week of travelling down the eastern side of Malawi , was deemed a success. Following the trip Dominic Sutherland said of the country and it's people: "Unlike South Africa and Zimbabwe, Malawi was historically seen by Britain and other powers as a country devoid of natural resources. Yet they failed to recognise its greatest resource - the people of Malawi . For people who possess very few material goods, they are abundantly rich in love, happiness, generosity and faith. We returned to Scotland having received much more than we gave."
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[15.11.07]