“The Nchima Trust makes up a very reasonable budget for paying tuition fee to the secondary school students.
First I select schools in different districts ensuring that the exam pass rate is good, teachers are suitably qualified for the subjects they teach and that there is a dedicated team of staff with a good study program. I take an interest on their views on girl's education check that there is reasonable equipment with a library with schoolbooks and importantly whether there are separate clean toilets for boys and girls. If there are not separate toilets my experience is that parents are reluctant to send girls to school.
Then I discuss the aims and goals of Nchima Trust's participation with the school and as all schools in rural areas have many students who cannot pay school fees, we collaborate with the school bursary committee. We focus on girls and boys who are doing well but would have been excluded due to financial problems. My friend, Rosena Kazembe accompanies me on those visits. She interviews the students about their background and walks around, speaks with the teachers , tries to find out what problems exist and inspects toilets.
With the donations, coming in like yours I can do so much more for orphaned students who have no access to buy school equipment, like exercise books, geometry sets etc. Sometimes school shoes or uniform as well. So many children live in a child household (no parents) with younger siblings and after school have to work in order to get some food and yet they still do well at school. Occasionally I come across an orphaned student in a very poor situation and finding it almost impossible to cope. In cases like this I send her/him to a small boarding school near Blantyre with a great lady as headmistress and I see the kid's life lightening up again. She is planning to make one of the houses on the school grounds available as a home for those orphans who have no home to go to in the holydays. At one school the headmistress took a girl student in form 3 into her house as the family decided she should be married out. So when I come to pay the school fee I make a small donation to support living expenses.
The donations make it possible to support the needy students so they can continue to study with ambition and it really does something for them that somebody is interested in them, cares about the term reports and encourages them. In that way The Nchima Trust is not only a donating cash machine but a real supporting institution with a voice and a face.
NGO's like UNICEF do show in their findings that education is the most important asset you could give to children. And Malawi, as one of the poorest countries can only afford a minimum for their rural schools. Nchima also started a girl's study program at one of the schools to keep the girls in the examination classes at school for study. This project is running well and very well monitored by the staff and school board. The ambulance cycle at the Chinyama villages is running well. The Community Based Organisation has it well organised together with the clinic.” Jeannette Heikens - June 2010