As the weather heats up here in Malawi the pace of activity at the school is also heating up! It is the final week for 8 of the 10 volunteers so it has been a busy week getting everything in place for the school, before they head off.

 

The main activity for the Irish teachers has been to go through the teaching syllabus with the local teachers, to enable the charity to understand what resources can help improve the teaching standards here at Matandani. With large class sizes, it is already a challenging teaching environment, so the main focus has been to give the teachers the best tools to teach. This can vary from purchasing benches so that the pupils have something to sit on, laminating pictures so pupils can visualise more and purchasing teacher guides for every subject so that a full list of teaching resources are available to teachers.

 

The newly purchased A3 printer and laminator have been used with the existing donated laptops to create a wealth of teaching resources. The teachers have been trained to use all of the new equipment in the hope that they continue to improve teaching standards throughout the year. Furthermore, we are trying to get the school connected to broadband internet which would further help this aim.

 

The school has had 5 new teachers, check out updated biographies that will be going onto the website soon.

 

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The main areas of activity are:

 Classroom and Teaching Resources:

 

  1. Updating all of the classrooms- working with teachers to identify useful teaching resources and laminating these
  2. Teacher signs for each new classroom
  3. New benches for classrooms- for pupils to sit on or to use as desks

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Sports

  1. Volleyball court: lining up, designing and building a new court, complete with a new net. This now makes the sporting facilities up to a fantastic grass netball court, a volleyball court, and badminton courts. We will be attempting to upgrade the soccer/football pitch next!The pitch was tested out by a match between the Irish teachers and the Malawian teachers, it was a closely fought match with the teams neck in neck until the very end when Ireland broke away and scored 2 points to win the match 26-24.

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 Other Activity

  1. Mooncups – a new project was launched at the school to trial the use of Mooncups for female pupils. Mooncups are reusable menstrual cups, designed to be a convenient, safe and eco-friendly alternative to tampons and pads. The cost of sanitary pads can be prohibitively expensive for pupils at the school, so the trial is to determine if the Mooncups will be a viable alternative. A meeting was held with the Sanitation Committee, and the Mooncups will be distributed amongst trial users in the new school year.

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Progress Update on Ongoing Activity

  1. First Sink Installation- the first sink has been completed in a classroom, and the second one is almost complete. The plan is to have all 8 classrooms connected to water by the start of the next school year. The sink installation requires a lot of underground piping to connect water to all the classrooms, which has mostly been completed this week.
  2. Teachers Toilet block – progress is coming along well with the new toilet block with a male and female toilet

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Matandani would like to thank all of the volunteers from Ireland who gave up time on their summer holidays to help out at the school. Thanks Sarah, Siobhan, Cathriona, Lori, Anna-Marie, Jane, Nacola and Suzanne!

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