Thank you to the students for working hard in teams to plan and organise resources for their respective activities – they did a great job and importantly their work had a huge impact on the community!
Year 7 had the opportunity of working closely with existing Lilongwe partners: Jane Adams School and Lilongwe Wildlife Trust across the week. Students developed resources and drew up plans to aid them in teaching conversational English to the students of Jane Adams. A sense of reciprocity was evident as BMIS students also learnt new Chichewa vocabulary from their Jane Adams counterparts. We hope that our students can build on these bonds and relationships in future Service activities such as Curriculum Building, Computer Coaching, and Sports Coaching. Jane Adams students also came into BMIS to experience the kind of Science experiments that they might not otherwise have access to at their school.
A trip to Lilongwe Wildlife Centre saw our students developing more educational resources and interactive ideas for young visitors to the centre.
Year 8 will look back on their week with fond memories – their Service was based in Chankhasi School, Nkhotakota, and involved guided reading with local primary school students, followed by a sports tournament involving both sets of students.
A message below from the head teacher of Chankhasi sums up the service element of the trip:
“On behalf of Chankhasi School I would like to thank you and BMIS Community for your recent visit, and honestly it was one of the best trips. It was really lovely to see how students from both schools interacted, and I’ m sure both schools benefited a lot from one another.
Be assured that your visits to Chankhasi School are contributing a lot.
I really enjoyed thoughtful questions your children fired at me. I have started working on them as they are helping me to improve some areas.
Please, send my best wishes to those students.”
The shape of the year 9 – 11 trips looked a little different to previous years, with years 9 and 11 taking part in Service together in Cape Maclear.
Their experience was split across the two sites: the HEEED Eco-craft Centre, and Sinthana Learning Centre. At Sinthana, the students prepared nursery and ICT lessons and the resources they left at the site were highly appreciated by both staff and students. Students also learnt from Sinthana students about ‘Keepod’ technology.
Below is a message from the founder of HEEED which touches on some of the activities students were involved in!
“It was a pleasure to watch the enthusiasm of all your students working at the various HEEED activities: paper-making/creative recycling (bottle-top baskets + glass tumblers), organic gardening, briquettes, the orphan-care sing-song etc.
Your students are the next generation of stewards – caring for our planetary well-being – so thank you for coming and sharing HEEED goals….. Please come back and a warm welcome awaits you all! “
Year 10 students were lucky to be the first to experience a new site and a new type of Service activity for WWW – Small Scale Community Development projects in Zomba. The focus was on empowering vulnerable community members to kickstart a business by gathering raw materials to turn into products such as briquettes, mandasi and popcorn, that had been selected by the community in question. Here is a word from our partner organisation, YODEP:
It had a great impact to the community as a well as YODEP. I could see the enthusiasm of members of community when they were discussing the students has left and the plans they were making. Yodep appreciates so much that will everything possible to sustain the project.
The team that came here also has managed to link us with the owner of Pakachere who has assured us of helping us to source paper for briquettes and also that she will be buying Briquettes. She has assured us that she will link us with other tourism institutions and that they can also buy briquettes. On Wednesday next week it’s International tourism day and YODEP has been asked to participate and mount a pavilion for briquettes which is also part of marketing. Mandasi will also be sold on that day.
YODEP will appreciate so much any initiative that will help in the supply of paper for briquettes project.
Last sincerely thanks to management, students as well as their parents who made it possible for this trip. They have special place in our hearts.
