Success

When you get to the stage that Malawians can teach and help other Malawians, I feel you must be doing something right.
The teachers are the Ungweru Youth group who are supported by our friends: Fr John Ryan and The Small Change organisation run by the Fitzpatrick Family in Cork.
The students are those associated with our Orphan Care facility in Salisbury Line.
The subject : Nutrition
The benificiaries: About 250 families


Liam writes:

Today the Ungweru youth group from St. Augustine's Parish came to Salisbury line for a talk on on nutrition and healthy breakfasts. The event had been publicized during the week using trilingual leaflets typed in Chicehwua, Tambuka and English. The guardian of each child was given one at the school on Wednesday, while the village chief got copies and larger A3 versions were put up on nearby trees.

On our arrival this morning there were a large number of women seated outside chatting, while another 12 played basketball on the nets built by Darren, Conor and Mark from the DIT Students Union group.

Over 70 parents/guardians including 3 fathers attended the talk inside. Every parent had an extra child, or two or three in tow (in addition to whatever children they had attending the nursery school). Throughout the talk there was at least one mother breastfeeding. The youth group discussed the importance of mixing vegetables with Nsima and then did a demonstration outside on how to make a morning porridge a fully nutritious meal.

Each guardian enjoyed a sample of the cooking that had been demonstrated. Afterwards there was a queue of mothers asking questions and expressing sincere gratitude to the Youth Group for the presentation. The Ungweru were bowled over by the response.

Perhaps what was more surprising was that despite all of this going on about 250 children aged between 2 and 6 were kept occupied, had their hands washed and fed a bowl of porridge. Elaina, the school cook, came to school in her best suit (with her new football gloves protecting her hands from her hot pot), but NEVER ONCE left her pot stirring her porridge to make sure the schools main objective - feeding - was met.

The DITSU well, also showed its importance today; around 20 buckets of water were used by the school today. Until now the women would have had to carry this up to half a kilometer on their heads, meaning that water for handwashing would have been considered a bit of a luxury of course the handwashing took place as usual!

Welcoming Ungweru