How to help
The Malawi projects were started by a group of health professionals working in the NHS. The initial plan was to build a school in a local village where the children attending school were being taught outside under a tree. The cost of building the school was £15,000 and in the first year we raised a total of £45,000.
The school building was funded by the group as opposed to being built by us which was important. We insisted that local workers were employed for the duration of the building works. This meant that locals were paid a wage for a number of months and some were taught new skills.
Our concept from the outset has been that we provide a hand up not a hand out. We insist that any money given to projects is used to develop self sustainable activities which can grow and develop.
We welcome volunteers from any quarter. We have volunteers from a wide variety of backgrounds and age profiles.
In order to become a volunteer applicants are interviewed by a member of the team and must be prepared to complete an application form and undergo a police check. Hours of involvement and frequency are agreed to suit the needs of each volunteer. We have a variety of roles including manning our shop, collecting donations or processing donations. We also require volunteers to assist in fundraising activities such as street collections, quizzes or any other fundraising efforts.
HOW WE STARTED
From the outset we explored all options for raising funds to support projects in Malawi. In the early days we held coffee mornings, asked people to fundraise by undertaking events such as marathons and hosted quizzes.
This raised significant amounts of money and we began collecting donations from family and friends. We soon had a sizeable amount of donations gathered and this led us to begin attending boot sales around the country.
Last year we began online sales which we found to be very very lucrative. We began operating on eBay as well as marketplace on Facebook. We then set up our own Facebook page which attracted new donors and in turn new donations.
We then agreed to open a shop thus allowing customers to walk in off the street and purchase donations. We recently opened our new permanent premises located at:
9 Clantilew Road, Portadown Co Armagh
BT62 1RE
From here we plan to grow the business and our aim is to maximise income to support the projects in Malawi. We also collect and process clothes which we sort in a variety of ways.
The very best of clothes get sold individually or line. The next best clothes are sold in the shop and the overflow are processed through cash for clothes.
We aim to get back to the full range of fundraising activities as soon as is possible. We also have a number of sponsors who make a monthly donation to the projects, all of which goes directly towards paying the wages of workers in Malawi
For all donations that you would like to make please click the donate button at the bottom of this page. This will bring you to PayPal where donations can be sent to @TheMalawiProjects.
As always any donations are welcome and you have our upmost thanks!
What WE FUND MONTHLY
OUR DELIVERY PARTNERS
