Small is beautiful when it comes to The Guardian's support for Malawian village

Fresh funding is essential if the village of Gumbi is to continue to pull itself out of poverty. A charitable venture created by Guardian environment editor John Vidal that supports two schools in Malawi has raised nearly £9,000 in the last 15 months and put another 75 children through secondary school in one of the poorest and least literate communities in the world.

The funds have bought textbooks, calculators and stationary for both the primary and secondary schools in the small market town of Nambuma, and it also helped rebuild the teachers’ houses and dig a well.

Donations were also used to install solar power to the schools, buy more books for the minute Gumbi village library and create a nursery school in the village that only seven years ago had only one book and no-one able to read it.

Vidal created the charitable venture after visiting Gumbi village in 2002, population 530, as part of an in-depth magazine article on the famine that was gripping the country. The villagers called it the “place with nothing, the poorest in the world”.

Vidal says: “This must be one of the only charitable funds where all the money goes straight to the schools and where the recipients, rather than the donors, decide what to spend it on. Last year we incurred no adminstrative costs at all. We now know this approach of starting small and sticking somewhere works and we would like to expand it to other villages.”

The Gumbi project contrasts with the Guardian’s much more ambitious project to support the development of Katine, a community of 25,000 people living in a poor agricultural community in north-east Uganda.

This project, which is supported by Barclays, has a budget of around £3 million over four years.

Vidal is convinced that lack of education was one reason Gumbi was so badly hit by successive droughts, and that education is now playing a major part in its recovery.

He says: “Back then, secondary education in rural Malawi was really only for a few boys, and most of those only went for a year or two to one of the badly run-down local schools. Parents either wanted their children to go to school but had no money for secondary education (it costs about £30 a year), or they were deeply suspicious of education and wanted them to work in the fields.”We have learned that change cannot be rushed, trust has to be earned and education-led development needs at least a generation to flourish. There’s still terrible poverty in all the villages in this part of Malawi, but at least people’s natural suspicion of both us and education seems to be going. Everyone in Gumbi and the surroundings area knows that the fund is not going away and is there for everyone to apply to for secondary schooling.”Adults and children are now coming forward in ever greater numbers wanting schooling. The ambitions of the parents and the children are far higher than they were. The first children to go through their secondary education are now learning trades and are not bound to subsistence farming. Perhaps in a year or two, the first children from Gumbi and the surrounding villages will get to university.”The schools are attracting a higher calibre of teacher because they can offer reasonable accommodation and textbooks, and there are now as many girls as boys in secondary education.

“There has been great progress, but we are nowhere near completing the work. The good news is that we have maintained a healthy core balance of money which should guarantee the continuation of the fund for many years. The bad news is that this capital has been earning very little income in the recession, which means we must redouble our efforts to raise money.”

A recent letter from Patrick Kamzitu, the local government health worker, who administrates the scheme, said:

“In Gumbi, the community library [that we opened last year] is now very popular. It has transformed the village. In the morning other villages come to Gumbi and use it as a nursery school. In the afternoon it is a library for the Gumbi children.”The solar lighting now works at the St Martins secondary school in Nambuma. That means the pupils can work later at night and have more chance to pass their exams.”The school is completely different from when the project came. The teachers’ houses have been rebuilt and now the government is sending two volunteers from the United States to the school in September.”On education, the project is still going on and this year we have managed to educate 75 pupils at different secondary schools. Of those who sat for fourth year exams two have passed, but not with good enough grades to take them to the university. The pupils this year are working hard and we hope for good results next year compared to this year”.Vidal says fresh funds are essential to keep the Gumbi venture going and says there are also openings for people from the UK to teach in the local schools.

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Small is beautiful when it comes to the Guardian's support for Malawi village

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Fresh funding is essential if the village of Gumbi is to continue to pull itself out of poverty. A charitable venture created by Guardian environment editor John Vidal that supports two schools in Malawi has raised nearly £9,000 in the last 15 months and put another 75 children through secondary school in one of the poorest and least literate communities in the world.

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John Vidal

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The Guardian

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Small is beautiful when it comes to The Guardian’s support for Malawian village

Gumbi Education Fund