Bread and Water for Africa®: Making Prayers Come True for Schoolgirls in Malawi Through WASH Program

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Bread and Water for Africa®: Making Prayers Come True for Schoolgirls in Malawi Through WASH Program

Thursday, January 23, 2025

In December 2023, Alex Steven Bango, a pastor and chairman of the Faithful Heart Foundation (FHF) in Malawi, reached out to Bread and Water for Africa® for assistance in constructing desperately-need toilet facilities (latrines) at the Konzere Primary School for nearly 800 female students.

Alex, who also partners with Bread and Water for Africa® for a conservation agriculture training program known as Farming God’s Way, told us when he visited the school that “I was greatly shocked to see a toilet (facility) which is the only one used by the whole school” which was “not in good condition because there’s a great crack and a hole both in front and behind of it.”

He explained that the girls, in grades Standard 1 to 8 (first through eighth grades) were continuing to use the toilets despite the lack of hygiene and potential hazards caused by the crumbling facilities as it was better than relieving themselves in the “bush,” and secondly, “there is no thick bush I the surrounding area of the school.”

He also questioned “How girls’ educations can be improved is there are no required structures for the girls?” and commented that one cannot ask why most of the girls in the area are uneducated as “one major factor is poor girls’ infrastructure.

“At this school there is no change room for those adolescent girls to use, which means in time of their monthly menstrual periods they do not come to school while others are learning.

“It’s my prayer that my request shall be considered by favor and grace of God.”

And thanks to the generous supporters of Bread and Water for Africa® we were able to make his prayers come true, and in May we proudly reported the first of our WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) toilet projects was completed.

A few months later, Debora Mkweya, Girls’ Matron at the school in Ngabu, wrote to thank us for funding the construction of the WASH project at her school.

“Thank you, Bread and Water for Africa®,” she wrote on behalf of herself and the hundreds of female students attending the school. “You have improved our hygiene. We were always worried every time nature called. We were not comfortable coming to school on the days we visit the moon.

“The fear was, how am I going to help myself in a nasty room without a door and full of cracks? A small room is needed by many, frankly speaking. We were suffering from emotional trauma.”

Following the success of that initial project and others in the country in 2024, Alex reached out to Bread and Water for Africa® for grant funding to construct the sanitary facilities for a brand-new secondary school in Konzere which he said will help greatly with the opening of the new school and the reduction of absenteeism, dropouts along with the promotion of appropriate hygiene practices and sanitation in the school environment.

Today, we are pleased to report that the project has been completed – at a cost of less than $3,000 – and now 100 students (60 girls and 40 boys) are benefiting from having the use of the safe, hygienic and sanitary toilet facilities.

Just weeks following the project’s completion, Alex said he’s already seeing that its objectives of increasing students’ pass rates, the reduction of absenteeism, dropouts and early marriages for girls are being met.

In addition, he told us, “More learners will be selected at this new community day secondary school for the 2024-2025 academic school session.”

And, while of course the students are excited to be attending a brand-new school, members of the local community – many of them their parents, are excited as well.

“They have warmly welcomed it because from the first time up to the final day more senior groups, groups and villagers and stakeholders have been coming at work for supervision and observing how it was done,” he told us.

During the construction process, local authorities not only came by to supervise the work – they also pitched in by helping out and providing food to the builders and all the workers.

“They also promised to continue taking care of it,” Alex noted.

To ensure the facilities’ long-term sustainability, which require “every day caring and monitoring,” Alex said that staff members will also be joining in with the school’s “sanitation club” members who are being trained on how to do that properly.

And to the supporters of Bread and Water for Africa® who made it all happen; Alex wants them to know “that in the community where we did the project was highly in need of sanitary facilities” and that at many schools in the region both boys and girls must use the “bush” today due to lack of single good toilets.

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