Although charitable organisations such as the Lifeline Fund tend to focus their valuable work on orphaned children in Malawi, improving living conditions and education for the country’s adults is also a high priority.
Malawian newspaper ‘The Nation’ has recently run a piece illustrating how difficult it is for people living in rural areas to access education. The article also uses the example of the Adult Literacy Project – run by the Iceland International Development Agency (ICEIDA) – to show just how beneficial a good education can be to people in Malawi’s rural areas.
Women, in particular, often miss out on education, as The Nation’s case study Esnat Magwaya proves. Magwaya is 70 years old and a beneficiary of the literacy scheme, who has recently learned to read. She says:
“When I was young, my father said it was not necessary for me to go to school as someone would marry me when I grew up. At that time, the nearest school was very far away, about 20 km from home.”
In addition to Magwaya, the Adult Literacy Project has so far benefited more than 90 villages in rural or isolated areas of the country, teaching a staggering 1,500 people how to read. ICEIDA also supports practical and business training related to everything from winter cropping to goat keeping.
