April to June 2016 Newsletter

Nursery Kitchen

Nursery

It is already 1 year now, since this blog has been started in July 2015.
Many projects have been started, continued and even finished during that time,
especially in the last few months.

A completely new nursery building has been planned and constructed in just a year's time thanks to generous donations from several individuals through FOMOE.
It will provide a safe, friendly and joyful environment to the youngest ones at MOET as soon as it opens when the next term starts in September!

Although the nursery with all its beautiful children-friendly drawings on the walls, its beds for tired children and its colourful plastic chairs was just finished, the next nursery-related project has already been started: The construction of a nursery kitchen will be essential for MOET's vision of having a completely separated and self-contained nursery. The idea is that the youngsters will stay inside the fences of the nursery and its playground all the time, so that they don't have to mix up with the much bigger and maybe intimidating primary students to have their daily meal.
Thanks to a grant from the Marine Institute of Canada, the construction of the kitchen has already begun, but due to a lack of further funding, the construction had to stop slightly below the window level. Therefore, MOET would like to ask its friends for further support to finish this great project.
The costs to finish this project are estimated to be 1000 £. 

The kitchen as of now

The Head Teacher's Office

The second project, which has been finished in a record time recently, was the construction of an office for MOET's headteacher! It was built as an extension on the left side of the old nursery, which will subsequently be used as a new staff room. Both of them will be a relief for the chronically congested main office and will allow the teachers to do their work more efficiently and professionally. We would like to express our gratitude once more to our donors, in this case the "United Methodist Church" from Atlanta, USA, who made this achievement possible for us!

New headteacher's office

Irrigation Scheme

Whilst the worrying dry spell in Malawi did not improve with the end of this year's rainy season, and most of Malawi's landscape is already bleak and stark, MOET's gardens are as green as ever!

The garden

A lot of maize

This is mainly achieved through an elaborate irrigation scheme using the abundance of water from the nearby lake. The main purpose of our garden is to grow vegetables and maize to feed the children and as well to create income for the school through sales. Unfortunately, the irrigation scheme was planned for a much smaller demand of around 200 kids, and now that there are more than 350 children here, demand is outstripping supply. For that reason, MOET
is looking for funds to extend its irrigation scheme and to connect the student's garden to the main irrigation scheme.
Apart from that, all kinds of donations, even if it is just a pack of seeds are always highly appreciated!


Standard 8 Party

One of the main events during the third term was, as it is every year, the graduation of the Standard 8 learners after 3 months of intense studying and a week full of examinations. All the learners and their families as well as the teachers were invited to a great party with good food, some drinks, and many encouraging speeches! As a venue, the Ziboliboli Beach Resort right on the shores of Lake Malawi was chosen again, and allowed the students a diversion after boarding at MOET for about 3 months. After the food was served and the speeches were delivered, the students, their families, the teachers and, of course, the director danced together to Malawian and international songs - an amazing experience! Following the end of the students' party, all the teachers and some of the support staff stayed at the place and enjoyed themselves with even more dancing. MOET is already looking forward to the
graduation of the current Standard 7 students next year!

Patterson's speech

Lunch

Gift-giving ceremony

Dancing!

Standard 8 Results

As MOET always prides itself with the above-average results of their Standard 8 leavers, we also want to wish this years' graduates good luck for the release
of their final results in September.

The last years' results

Laptops

We would like to close this blog with an urgent request: Thanks to MOET's secondary school sponsorship programme, we have been able or are intending to send some of our now grown-up students to college! Most of them are going to the "Technical College Salima", where they are expected to have Laptops to work with. Unfortunately, it exceeds MOET's financial ability to provide all of the college students with computers, so we would like to ask anyone for old, used laptops they don't need anymore. Even if you think, that it might be too old/used/scratched, they can still be of great use for MOET and its students.

January to March 2016 Newsletter

How time flies! Already three months have passed since our last blog entry shortly after Christmas. Nonetheless, the last months have been a good time for us here at MOET.


Football/ Netball Match

The beginning of January started with a football and netball match between MOET and Kalenjeka School. All teachers and many students squeezed themselves in the back of a big pick-up truck and 40 minutes later, they reached a village near Monkey Bay.

                                           (MOET in blue, Kalenjeka in red)

Sadly, all of our netball and football teams lost narrowly.

New Volunteer

The month continued with the unexpected arrival of a new volunteer: Karin, a professional primary school teacher from Sweden. She stayed in Mangochi with her husband for a few months and came to MOET three times a week using a minibus! She helped us with new teaching skills in English Grammar and Social/ Environmental Skills in Standard 7.

At her last visit with her husband, she left some nice games for the children and helped us financially with the means to buy a new printer. We thank her a lot for both, the time and the gifts she gave to MOET!

Solon Foundation

A few weeks ago, another much-appreciated donation was given to us by Doug Funk (from the “Solon Foundation”). Firstly, he provided us with a lot of educational software and after we asked that we do not know how to use it with the children in the classroom, he spontaneously got a projector from his car for us. Now our learners can enjoy very new ways of learning!

                        (education & fun together, in the Standard 7 classroom)

MOET Cares

Here at MOET, we do not care solely for the education of our children, but also for other important aspects of their lives like their health. Many of our children go to the lake very frequently for washing or bathing, although some of the areas of Lake Malawi away from the beaches of the lodges and hotels pose a risk of contracting Billharzia to them. Since this illness remains largely untreated in the most of the villages, we have invited a nurse from adjacent Koche Private Hospital to give out adjusted medication to all children according to their weight and size.

Nursery block construction

For the first time in the history of MOET, we will have our own, solitary nursery block! The new "Early Childhood Development Center" (ECD) will have enough space to cater for up to 80 children. This is a big step forward from our current small nursery next to the ANAMED, which is quite congested and can hardly accommodate more than 30 children.

Following recommendations by the government, the ECD and the rest of MOET will be completely separated. This means that the infants will have their own kitchen, playground and sports equipment to play with.

We are very grateful that the strong fund-raising activities by FOMOE have enabled us to 

pursue this goal!

The construction has begun exactly 1 month ago, on 25 March, and as you can see, by now we have already reached up to the window level! We expect the whole nursery building to be finished in the end of May.

Right after that we will continue with the kitchen, eating room, lavatories, playground and a fence around all of it to protect the children.

Thanks a lot to all friends, donors and of course to the readers of our newsletter!

October to December Newsletter

Christmas/ New Year Party

Like every year, MOET hosted a party this year as well:

...a party  for its learners in the afternoon of 23^rd December:

with cooking, dancing and eating rice and meat  for all students!    

                    

...a party for its staff in the evening and night of 23^rd December, which was funded by the teachers:

... and a party for the former MOET and now secondary school students on 30^th of December:

ELMA workshop

In November, MOET Director Patterson Majonaga and accountant Josephine Saidi took part in a 3-day workshop offered by ELMA in Lilongwe. The topics of the workshop was mainly financial management.

In the picture, you can see a group photo of all of the participants inside Crossroads Hotel.

Guardians

The picture above shows a meeting of the guardians. In this meeting they were taught about the sustainable use of bicycles for day students.

Donations

Donation by Sunbird Nkopola Lodge:

This December, the staff of Sunbird Nkopola Lodge - the place where the famous Lake Of Stars festival takes place every year - was visiting MOET School.

As shown in the first picture, the General Manager was bringing a large donation of books to the MOET Learners. After finishing the donation, they took some time to walk around the MOET grounds and to appreciate the irrigation system in the second picture.

As a gesture of thankfulness, one MOET child was presenting a speech to the donors.

This donation was even covered by both of the nationwide newspapers of Malawi: The Nation and the Daily Times.

Even more donations:

A picture of the “tree nursery”, which is funded by ELMA.

Mrs. Joyce Jaffu, a local author from Mangochi donated some of her books to the MOET learners.

Mr. Majonanga is presenting a donation to the chairperson of Tiyanjane support group from Hillary Hergaty of Christian Aid Relief Trust.

One of the helpers of MOET, the Marine Institute of Canada donated money which was used for the electrification of Standard 8 classroom for night studies and for the purchase of uniforms for all children at the school.

Every day life at MOET

Busy times in MOET library: head teacher and volunteer Johannes from Germany in action

Adventist Youth from Blantyre is visiting MOET and learns about Permaculture