St Andrew’s International High School, Malawi |

If we can have it they should have it!!!

We are delighted to share a blog written by ‘Girls for the goals’, students at St Andrew’s International High School who are part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.

Their project is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community. 

Project Overview

We are a group of students from St Andrews International High School situated in Blantyre Malawi. As students we understand the importance and the need for education. Which is why we have chosen quality education as we have seen that many people in our community don’t have the chance to go to school and if the do the environment in which the are forced to learn is terrible, We have seen these conditions and as a fellow learner we feel it is right to give the people the education the they deserve. Because we believe that if we have the opportunity to have good education then certainly the people who surround us also deserve good quality education. As a group we started to look at certain factors that prevent people from having a good quality education the main factor that came into mind is money. Malawi is not as well development and at least half of the country are living in poverty.

We started looking at ways in which we can make a difference, even if its just something small as long as we make a difference in peoples lives and that’s what counts. At first we didn’t know were to start but we want to make a difference, we started looking at some of the schools that are not well of so that we can help them. We also before started looking at how we were going to help them we needed to find a way to help them.

Our Journey

Today we went to visit our chosen school. It took us two weeks to get into contact with them. It was very difficult to get into contact with them because their school numbers weren’t accurate. Our journey to the school was amazing but on the way we got stuck in the hole on the road, it was difficult to get to the school because the road was bumpy and full of holes. The most nervous part of the journey to make a difference was when we had to go into the classes and associate with the teachers and students. We were told by the head mistress about the school.

The school is called Chirimba secondary day school.The school was very welcoming and we are looking forward to do our part in making a good impact. The school has between 100 and 200 hundred students and it only has eight classes. The class were so packed up that 5 people shared a 2 persons desk in some of the class the roofs were liking. The library could only accommodate 50 people borrowing their books and the rest are not able to have the chance to borrow from the library and study. We broke off individually to ask the students and teachers how we could help improve the school and how we can make it a better place. They told us about how they had no lab equipment to do their experiments for the sciences, how the school fees and uniform were too expensive to afford.

How the toilets were so unsanitary and would often cause people to fall ill because of how dirty it is. They also told us about how there was not enough equipment for practicing sports. After we left the school we started looking at ways in which we can help them out. We decide that we would have fundraisers to help us find support and help them. Participating in the global goals competition has helped us to have a chance as students to make a difference, it has helped us to identify certain issues in our community.

Helping people to have quality education was fun and a nice thing to do, because. if we have the education they should also have the education

The Next Chapter

At the moment we are focusing on the fundraising. we have already set up plans on how we can earn money. we are planning a school candy sell, bake sale,funky clothes mufti day and a scavenger hunt to help us earn money for Chirimba Secondary day school.

Apart from that we have made donation sheets that will be passed on around the our school. Our school has also given us some of our desks that are not being used to for us to donate to Chirimba day secondary school.

Helping people to get quality education is the making a difference to our world, maybe even making it a better place.

We would like to help more people and more schools.

The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.