Category: Community

Community, Healthcare, Malawi, Volunteers

Student nurse joins Ruarwe Clinic team

Phunzira

Student nurse Emily has been with the team at Ruarwe Health Centre for 4 weeks undertaking her elective placement. Learning all about healthcare challenges in such rural communities, the different medical conditions encountered in Malawi and treatment with very limited drugs and resources.

Nursing electives are a great opportunity for students to really experience a completely different working environment and health system from the western systems they are training in. The staff at Ruarwe Clinic also absolutely revel in the opportunity to both share their knowledge and learn in return. This exchange of knowledge is absolutely key to any elective placement.

Student nurse Emily

Emily was a wonderful student, who really got stuck into Malawian life. it was a pleasure having you with us Emily, we really look forward to hosting you again soon!

Community, Education, Malawi

The Maize Mill moves into its new home

Phunzira

The maize mill has been moved into its shelter in the heart of Ruarwe village. Once completely up and running this mill will save community members the 20km hike south to the nearest mill in Usisya with their heavy bags of maize to be milled and back with their bags of flour. This walk takes locals approximately 4 hours each way and the vast majority of the time this task falls to women who predominently carry out any household and farming related tasks. Often with a child on their back, they will undertake the journey to the mill and back in one day as the finances are just not there for any kind of overnight stay away from their own home.

The mill will also help to make Nyumba ya Masambiro financially self-sustainable to allow community members continued access to free education projects. This has been an important part of our ethics and aims since the beginning of our projects. Watch this space for updates when the mill starts running!

Maize Mill

Community, Donations, Healthcare, Malawi

Ambulance boat back on the water

Phunzira

The beautiful Ruarwe ambulance boat is happily living in the village again after its full maintenance and repainting made possible by our wonderful donors. We would like to extend a huge ‘thank you!’ on behalf of the community to Richard Gray for his very generous donation and repeat volunteer Leah Desmond for her very successful fundraising. These funds allowed a complete overhaul maintenance of the Ruarwe Ambulance Boat, completed by the boat builder Zero in Usisya. The maintenance was carried out between September and December 2017, and the repainting completed at the end of February 2018.
Since its maintenance it has carried critically ill patients to Usisya for life-saving treatment and it has been deployed in a large scale public health program to treat an outbreak of scabies in our catchment area lakeshore villages.

A huge thank you to the donors that have made this maintenance possible and kept this life-saving transport afloat.

Community, Malawi

Maize mill income generation scheme underway!

Phunzira

The staff at Nyumba ya Masambiro have begun – in January 2018 they purchased a maize mill and husk remover, as well as constructed a separate kiosk to run the business from. The mill will be up and running by the end of February, and has already become the talk of the whole community.

The aim is to provide a vital service to villagers, who rely heavily on maize as a primary staple and currently have to travel extreme distances to the nearest operational mill. The profits are expected to fully sustain the costs at the centre (project materials, staffing, maintenance of buildings, etc.) and any surplus funds will be re-directed to existing health/education projects in the catchment area.

A big thank you to everyone who has contributed towards this scheme! If you wish to make a donation it is not too late – please go to www.totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/ruarwemaizemill

 

 

Community, Malawi, Volunteers

Shahar brings back power to NYM

Phunzira

A huge thank you to Shahar Lakritz, a voluntary engineer from Israel who came to Ruarwe in August 2017 to volunteer his services at NYM community centre.

As well as solving NYM’s ongoing power problems (there is now electricity in all of the rooms!), he made the time to get to know the staff at the centre and nearby lodge, as well as make a trip to Khondowe for the malipenga dance festival. He was also kind enough to donate some electrical supplies to NYM, as well as share his precious knowledge with a selection of the staff.

Shahar – thank you – you will be very missed!

Community, Malawi

NYM youth club hosts netball matches

Phunzira

NYM youth club members are extremely proud of the new netball bibs kindly donated by Netball UK. To celebrate these new bibs, NYM youth club hosted Banda Primary School for a small netball tournament. The celebration began with singing and dancing in the NYM youth centre. Youth club members had fundraised within the community to buy a goat for a wonderful lunch shared between community members, the youth club and their visitors. Everyone then climbed the hill to the community ’netball court’ under the giant Baobab tree. The Junior NYM team, wearing the new navy bibs, beat Banda Juniors 1-0. Meanwhile, Banda Seniors played an excellent game, beating the older NYM youth students, wearing the yellow bibs, 8-3. Thank you again to Netball UK for these wonderful gifts. Having these bibs has really boosted female engagement, both with sports and with youth club attendance in general, for which we are very grateful.

Community, Education, Healthcare, Volunteers

Volunteer nurses provide informal contraceptive health education

Phunzira

Teenage pregnancy is a very real problem across rural Malawi, resulting in girls dropping out from secondary education and, while re-admission policies do exist, it is unclear how well they are followed. In order to tackle this problem, two volunteer nurses conducted an informal contraceptive health education talk for both male and female school students in Khondowe. They provided extensive information about contraceptive services available at both the Khondowe and Ruarwe Health Centres and answered the students’ questions about contraception.

While sex education (including contraception) is on the school syllabus, this is sadly often overlooked due to both staffing and social pressures, amongst other issues.  Alice Worsley and Hannah Ward were able to start tackling this lack of education along with John Chilinde, project co-ordinator and youth leader at NYM. Thank you!

 

Community, Malawi

New netball bibs arrive in Malawi!

Phunzira

We would like to extend a huge thank you to Netball UK for the donation of two sets of netball bibs to the Nyumba Ya Masambiro Youth Club. They arrived in Malawi at the end of August. The bibs, in navy blue and yellow, were worn with pride during the inaugural game on Friday September 16th 2016. The game was well attended by community members and the blue team won 7-4. The girls in the youth club are thrilled with the new bibs and plans are already afoot to set up matches against other local teams. Thanks you to Netball UK for making this possible and for supporting the promotion of sports for females in the community.

Community, Education, Malawi

NYM 2016 Handover Celebration

Phunzira

The NYM handover party in Ruarwe on 23rd April was a huge success, many thanks to all those who worked so hard over the last few months to make it happen!

The morning session was our Annual General Meeting so discussions were held with guests from the catchment area to discuss NYM’s achievements from last year as well as its goals for 2016. The afternoon saw the arrival of the visitors coming by boat from Nkhata Bay (a particularly long journey – many thanks for travelling so far to join us!) and included a number of speeches as well as songs by the nursery and youth club, dances from the Mbotosha women, and an excellent production by Difficult & Bikilone (Ekhesha & John) who entered the arena dressed as ladies and entertained the crowd for a hilarious 20 minute drama.

Many thanks to those that came from near and far to join us for this special occasion, and a special thanks to those that gave money to appreciate Maria’s English alphabet recital – you have collectively paid for her nursery tuition until the end of the year, yewo!

NYM has now been officially handed over to the staff and the wider community to manage independently. This was a very special day for NYM, Phunzira and Ruarwe Village, and we would like to thank everyone that has helped us along this epic journey – from Malawi to England to America to Australia! TAWONGA CHOMENI!

Community, Education, Malawi

IT Room up and running

Phunzira

We are very pleased to announce that the IT room at Nyumba Ya Masambiro has officially opened. IT lessons are now taking place on an almost daily basis led by the manager Watts Mkhuta. Thank you to Rob Hook for sorting out our electricity at the centre in order to allow this to happen, to Phillip Zheng for helping out with the first few lessons and all the kind donors who have passed on laptops to NYM when they were finished with them. So far 9 people from the community have started their lessons and many more are enquiring and keen to start soon.