Our Malawi Project Comes to an End

April 9, 2024
11:21 am

Our project in Malawi, which the Scottish Government funded to challenge stigma and discrimination against disabled children and ensure they can access education, has recently come to a close. Karen Goodman-Jones, Sense Scotland’s Malawi Project Coordinator, reflects on the project after five and a half years.

Road of Learning

a car drives down a road in malawi — En route to visit remote and rural schools in Malawi.

Starting any new project is always exciting and a potential voyage of unexpected outcomes. This time was no different.

We had a plan to identify and support children with additional needs to access mainstream primary education, challenging negative attitudes along the way. This plan involved training teachers in inclusive education ideas and practices; setting up support networks for parents and carers of children with additional needs (with income-generating activities); and training peer educators – pupils both with and without additional needs – to champion inclusive education at every school we worked with.

Working with local partners, the Church of Central African Presbyterian (CCAP), we thought we knew what a successful project would look like.

The Sense Scotland project vehicle.

Impact of the Project

The basic data:

We identified and supported 7,891 children with additional needs to access education
We trained 12,315 community leaders to achieve an understanding of children with additional needs and the rights of all children to a relevant education
We trained 7,156 teachers with the skills to adopt inclusive education practices within their classrooms
We trained 6,112 parents and carers to achieve an understanding of their children’s ability and right to go to school

Behind the numbers, what about the long-term impact within the project lifespan?

We tracked school budget allocations for additional needs support, which rose from 3% to 75%
The percentage of learners with additional needs passing end-of-year exams rose from 50% to 61%
The percentage of teachers evidencing support for inclusive education rose from 22% to 71%
The percentage of parents saying their child with additional needs was protected from violence, stigma and discrimination rose from 45% to 86%

Without false modesty, I can say we exceeded all expectations – not just in reaching a large number of people, but in locally generated new ideas to move the project forward, expand its outcomes, and own it, community by community going forward.

A class of 180 pupils in Malawi — What a class of 180 pupils looks like – less than half of pupils have desks or benches.

Thanks to the skills of the teams in engaging the communities in which they lived, they continually supported individuals, schools and families where needed with insight, compassion, and practical help. This helped children to thrive in inclusive schools, teachers to enjoy inclusive education, and communities to embrace all of their members.

Success can take many forms; for the hundreds of communities and parent support groups we worked with, new bylaws were established to ensure all learners went to school. In addition, income-generating projects were created, which have proven to be viable and sustainable – these included farming, tree planting, and crafts. Profits generated from these projects were reinvested to support further businesses and activities, as well as supporting learners at school both with and without additional needs. Students were equipped with essential items such as uniforms, books, pens and bags, while schools were provided with disability ramps, new toilet blocks and blackboards.

Left: community selling tomatoes. Right: three hands all wearing Sense Scotland wristbands. — Left: a very attractive way to sell tomatoes. Right: Malawian students proudly wearing Sense Scotland bracelets.

Success in the Face of Adversity

No project ever runs smoothly and there were certainly challenges, including huge inflationary rises and unexpected currency devaluations further impacting the daily challenges for families living without a social security net.

When we started the project in 2018, we didn’t foresee a global pandemic which closed all schools – but we also didn’t foresee the ideas of the parent support groups during this time, clubbing together to pay for a teacher so their children didn’t fall behind. Even when schools had reopened, we had not expected to find teachers and school management teams willing to visit individual homes after school hours to identify and support children needing extra help.

A representative from Sense Scotland warmly embracing several Malawian women. — Karen meeting mother groups – tasked to support female education.

We were able to train peer educators to advocate for inclusive schools and for everyone’s right to an education. We hoped that they would be a powerful tool to help challenge negative attitudes, but we hadn’t counted on their enthusiasm to stop bullying and name-calling, and for their schools to be a fun place for everyone.

A group of peer educators — Peer educators – pupils both with and without additional needs who championed inclusive education at every school we worked with.

From the stories sent by the team – and when I’m lucky enough to visit – I hear extremely humbling things, from the honesty of the parents who admitted they used to keep their children with additional needs at home or out of sight, but who now encourage their education, to the children themselves who told me, “I have friends now; I enjoy school”, and their parents who said, “I enjoy watching my son play football with friends for the first time and speaking his first word – ‘mama'”.

Success is also with the individual pupils with additional needs who passed their Primary Certificate of Education and were selected to go on to secondary school – a huge achievement which is based on academic merit in Malawi and not as a legal requirement as it is in Scotland.

Children at a Malawian school signing numbers — Children signing numbers at Karonga School for the Deaf.

The End of the Project

Every project has to end, and this one ended on a high note, with a National Conference on Inclusive Education with best practice guidelines in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, who praised our partners’ work on their government’s website!

For myself, personal highs were reading the powerful stories of change and hearing them first-hand during my very privileged visits in the beauty of the country, the hours in cars travelling to rural schools, along with the traffic hazards – dirt roads during the rainy season, goats and cattle roaming wildly, along with the occasional monkey!

A man herding cattle along the bank of a lake — Cattle at Lake Malawi.

Wherever I went during my visits – whether it was villages, schools, or people’s homes – I experienced a warm welcome, and eagerness to demonstrate long-term change in both attitudes and facilities.

Left: a Malawian woman and a Sense Scotland staff member hold a bag of eggs. Right: a woman holds a chicken. — Full circle of generosity from two different parent support groups. Left: Karen’s first visit to Malawi in 2018 receiving a gift of eggs. Right: Karen’s final visit to Malawi in 2023 receiving a gift of a very large chicken!

Thank you to the Scottish Government for funding this incredibly project, and to Sense Scotland for making it happen.

a group of children enjoying the shade under a large tree — Playtime under the shade.

Written by Karen Goodman-Jones, Malawi Project Coordinator

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