Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and is unable to meet its infrastructure needs. Fisherman’s Rest, together with it’s many partners, engages in numerous building programmes, schools, classrooms, kitchens, toilets, libraries as well as other development programmes within the community.

 

Classrooms

Many of our rural schools have none or very few classrooms for students to learn in. We regularly see students learning under trees, grass shelters or in mud-brick shelters that are falling down. We are building a number of quality classrooms in many schools. The new classrooms are designed to be spacious, light, friendly and a welcoming environment for students and teachers. Some of the visiting teams passing through Fisherman’s Rest help brighten up the classrooms with art, teach a number of subjects and bring fun into these learning spaces.

Teacher Housing

It is vital to provide a suitable standard of accommodation for teachers, otherwise they have to travel vast distances to school. Where housing is available for teachers, staff are on time for lessons and the school day starts earlier and ends later. In such schools, staff attendance is massively improved and this alone does have a significant impact on the quality of student learning as there is no substitute for a good teacher in the classroom.

In all our programmes, we first meet with the community and agree to work in partnership. For the buildings, we require the community to mould bricks, to supply river sand and unskilled labour as their contribution to the projects. Fisherman’s Rest provides wood to burn the bricks from our sustainable supply in our private game reserve and our partners then fund a contractor to carry out the building work.

 

The building projects have a massive impact in our area and we love working with partners to see these things happen. If you would like to partner with us or get more information about our building projects, please e-mail building@fishermansrest.net to begin the conversation.