Dear Friends,
In the spirit of the season of sharing, I wish you Happy Holidays from Raising Malawi.
I believe that there is no greater evidence of the existence of miracles than in the hard work and selfless dedication of our partners, donors, staff and volunteers who give so much to Malawi ’s most vulnerable. Of course, we receive the greater gift in return: the gratitude of a Malawian mother, the smile on the face of an empowered child, the real possibility of peace and prosperity in the developing world. These are the things to be cherished.
2008 has been a remarkable year for our organization and for the children we serve, and we are already working to make 2009 even more successful. Here is a summary of some of the projects we undertook these past twelve months.
Spreading the message: Raising awareness.
The year got off to a glittering start in 2008 when Raising Malawi co-founder Madonna and luxury goods maker Gucci co-hosted A Night to Benefit Raising Malawi & UNICEF in New York City . The A-list event, held on the North Lawn of the United Nations, raised a significant amount of money and brought the work of Raising Malawi to worldwide attention. This evening inspired Raising Malawi volunteers to stage their own benefit events in Toronto, Los Angeles, Denver and Miami.
A newly expanded and redesigned Raising Malawi website went live in early 2008, bringing more information, videos, and regularly updated blog entries to the online community. Now our volunteers and donors can take immediate action on behalf of Malawi ’s children simply by visiting www.raisingmalawi.org.
April saw the world premiere of I AM BECAUSE WE ARE at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City . This gripping documentary film, written and produced by Madonna (who co-founded Raising Malawi along with Michael Berg) and directed by Nathan Rissman, chronicles the plight of Malawi ’s children and profiles Raising Malawi’s beneficiaries and partners. Before the year is out, I AM BECAUSE WE ARE will have been screened at festivals in Cannes, Paris, Traverse City, Santo Domingo and the Netherlands, and made its television broadcast debut on The Sundance Channel on the twentieth anniversary of World AIDS Day.
A stunning companion volume to the acclaimed documentary is currently available for pre-order from powerHouse books. I Am Because We Are features riveting images by award-winning photojournalist Kristen Ashburn that provide an intimate look at the lives of eight Malawian children featured in the film. The book includes a foreword by Madonna, a statement from Ashburn, excerpts from interviews with Malawian children, their biographies, and extended captions. Proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated directly to Raising Malawi.
Immediate Needs: Nourishing body and soul.
Recognizing that orphans and other vulnerable children constitute one of the biggest social challenges confronting Malawi as a nation, Raising Malawi launched a community-based support project with the Network of Organizations working with Vulnerable and Orphaned Children (NOVOC) in February, 2006. NOVOC is a non-government umbrella organization which exists to promote, facilitate and empower individuals and organizations involved with the care of vulnerable children. With financial contributions from Raising Malawi, and the support of Malawi ’s Ministry of Gender and Child Welfare, NOVOC is successfully improving the delivery of psycho-social support, advocacy, community development, medical care, education scholarships and food services for up to 1,750 community based child care centres.
For the past three years, Raising Malawi has worked with one of Malawi ’s most respected community-based organizations, Consol Homes, to bring daily meals, targeted medical care, education scholarships, and clean water to vulnerable kids through 106 community-based child care centres.
In 2007, the Raising Malawi-Consol Homes Orphan Care Centre opened its doors to over 4,000 children in the village of Namitete . In August of this year, the Orphan Care Centre became a recipient of the 2008 International Red Ribbon Award. The award is presented by the United Nations Development Program at the International AIDS Conference to celebrate outstanding grassroots initiatives and community-based organizations working to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS. In addition to meeting the basic needs of vulnerable children, the Raising Malawi-Consol Homes Orphan Care Center has also provided vocational skills training to countless adults from the surrounding area.
In rural Africa , where water-borne illness still runs rampant, clean water is very much a matter of life and death. By partnering with organizations like the Joyce Banda Foundation and introducing innovative tools like Q-drum, Raising Malawi is helping to bring clean water to over 50,000 people this year alone, and will do the same for many more in 2009.
We continue to support Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, its pediatric surgical unit, and to Malawi ’s sole pediatric surgeon, Dr. Eric Borgstein. In a country where infectious disease gets the most attention, there is little funding allocated to the treatment of birth defects, childhood cancers, trauma and burns. By partnering with Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital , Raising Malawi enabled Dr. Borgstein to perform 500 surgical procedures on 450 children in a single year, and helped to fund annual salaries, teaching programs, and anesthesia and x-ray machines.
We also partnered with Harvard School of Dental Medicine to offer basic preventative dental care, including examinations, x-rays, teeth cleaning, extractions, and toothbrush instruction for hundreds of children at Raising Malawi’s partner sites. Following the success of these interventions, Raising Malawi and Harvard College of Dental Medicine have co-created and launched the first Oral Health Development Program in Malawi. This program, managed in partnership with the Dental Department at Mchinji Government District Hospital has served thousands of children and caregivers, and will continue to do so in 2009.
Women and Children First: Transforming Malawi ’s future.
Among our most exciting and ambitious projects to date is the forthcoming Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. This all-girls secondary school, designed to empower Malawi ’s daughters to become their personal best, is founded on the principle that educating girls today empowers the women of tomorrow; and empowering women means improving the lives of generations to come. The Academy’s comprehensive curriculum is being carefully tailored to the unique needs of its future students, and its very structure, designed by studioMDA, will be a collaborative effort using sustainable technologies that integrate and benefit the school’s local environment. We are now on target for a 2009 groundbreaking and plan to welcome our inaugural class, selected from the poorest and most promising of Malawi ’s young women, in just two years. In addition, plans to create an all-girls’ secondary school in Zomba have been announced.
Three years ago, Raising Malawi partnered with Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Millennium Promise in the Malawian village of Gumulira , where 6,700 people live in extreme poverty and every day is a struggle to survive. Villagers there are suffering from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and bed-nets; and little access to schools or to medical clinics. Raising Malawi continues to invest in Millennium Promise’s community-led initiatives to benefit the health, education, food production, access to clean water and essential infrastructure for the impoverished villagers of Gumulira. In late 2008, Gumulira villagers broke ground on a primary school that will serve and educate some of the most impoverished children in Malawi.
Raising Malawi ’s continued dedication to gender equity led us to partner with Somebody Cares. This remarkable organization helps women to open and manage their own bank accounts, and provides assistance with school fees, books, and uniforms for their children. Raising Malawi helped to improve the lives of 820 Malawian widows through a program that turns basic skills into profitable businesses in knitting, sewing and crocheting, baking and gardening, and soap and bead making. Raising Malawi also funded a very important new project by sending ten women from Malawi to a rape crisis counselor training week at rape crisis training in South Africa.
SFK-Malawi continues to make tremendous strides in providing children and teens with the tools for positive transformation. In less than two years, thousands of kids in Malawi ’s villages, schools, orphanages, and detention centers, have learned to take responsibility for their own futures by living their lives with kindness and human dignity. SFK’s remarkable programs have been praised by parents, teachers, and non-government organizations; while Malawi’s Ministry of Education has called for the expansion of SFK throughout the country. In June, the Executive Director of Home of Hope Orphanage had a powerful idea. Having seen the positive effects of the SFK program on the orphanage’s children, Lucy Chipeta thought that caregivers could benefit from classes as well. Home of Hope now provides more than 600 infants and children with food, clothing, shelter, and primary education. In addition to bringing SFK to both children and adults at Home of Hope, Raising Malawi is providing financial support for the overall operation of Home of Hope and has undertaken the rehabilitation of the orphanage, including construction of new facilities to address the pressing needs of a vulnerable population.
Our SFK-Malawi Sponsorship Program, a special project dedicated to providing direct psycho-social assistance to children in need, continued its work in 2008. Throughout the year, the Sponsorship Program provided urgent interventions for children orphaned by AIDS, suffering from extreme poverty, and victimized by genital mutilation and other abuses.
Thanks to our partnership with KINDLE Orphan Care, we have provided critical services to nearly 700 children in thirty-five villages through twenty separate youth and counseling groups. The focus of KINDLE’s work is on providing health and nutrition, education, spiritual and social programming, and community development for orphans and their caregivers. Raising Malawi has contributed financial support that enabled construction of KINDLE’s Katawa Health Clinic, which is providing medical services to over 10,000 people.
With support from Raising Malawi, child services have continued at Crisis Nursery in Lilongwe . Every year Crisis Nursery welcomes infants and young children who have been abandoned, and provides nutritious meals, safe housing, and ongoing medical care.
Volunteers: Making a difference.
Volunteers from all walks of life (from college students in Israel to doctors in New Jersey ) were inspired to travel to Malawi to assist our community-based program partners. To help facilitate this important volunteer work, Raising Malawi announced a partnership with World Camp Inc., a non-profit organization committed to empowering children in impoverished communities through education. World Camp provides opportunities for volunteers to teach HIV/AIDS prevention, nutrition, gender equality, environmental awareness and human rights to underserved children in Malawi. World Camp supports the mission of Raising Malawi and is dedicated to developing unique volunteer positions for Raising Malawi supporters.
Raising Malawi volunteer Dr. Murray Treiser made two self-managed trips to Malawi in February and October of 2008, during which he braved snakes, torrential rains, and a near-deadly auto accident to treat more than twelve thousand grateful patients. “Doctor Murray,” as he is affectionately known, treated many preventable illnesses in the most blighted areas of urban and rural Malawi. His daily reports from Malawi were heartbreaking and uplifting, and served to remind us all of both the remarkable strides being made every day, and the tremendous amount of work still to be done.
Our Home-based Volunteer Program encourages all supporters to join us in our mission to improve the lives of Malawi’s children. Bianca Gomez and Amy Saumell, two students at the University of Florida in Gainesville and members of the Pre-Med National American Medical Student Association, initiated a student-led project aimed at providing critical medical supplies for our community-based partners in Malawi; famed fashion illustrator, Jeffrey Fulvimari, took his love of design to the next level by volunteering his time to create customized stationery for the Raising Malawi pen-pal program, which currently engages hundreds of children attending Polytechnic School (K-12) in the United States with orphaned children living at Home of Hope orphanage; and thanks to the creative vision and hard work of Michael Welch in San Francisco, Raising Malawi was able to provide much-needed antiretroviral HIV medication to AIDS programs associated with Kamuzu Central Hospital. These are just a few of the ways volunteers have contributed to the lives of Malawi’s children. In 2009, we will launch an exciting new viral volunteer campaign to help support and expand our programs.
Ubuntu: Partners in ending poverty.
We at Raising Malawi understand that our success relies on the expertise of our partners around the world. In 2008, we were pleased to continue our relationship with David Reifman, esq. (senior partner at DLA Piper). Since 2006, David and DLA Piper devoted significant time to pro-bono efforts for Raising Malawi, focusing on issues of real estate development, including land use and urban planning, facilities sitting, property acquisition, public/private financing transactions, infrastructure improvements, and community and economic development.
In May, we had the privilege of welcoming studioMDA as a pro-bono partner. studioMDA will manage the design of the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, using the latest technology and design methods to benefit the developing world and provide innovative opportunities for sustainability.
In August, SalesForce (a leader in Customer Relationship Management solutions) named Raising Malawi as a pro-bono client, offering its expertise in the areas of volunteer management and donor relations. This new relationship honors our commitment to providing our dedicated supporters with consistent, reliable care.
As Raising Malawi approaches the groundbreaking of the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, we are pleased to announce that in October, 2008, Ogilvy & Mather joined Raising Malawi’s growing list of pro-bono partners. Ogilvy & Mather, one of the world’s leading advertising, marketing, and public relations agencies has committed to creating the marketing and advertising campaigns of the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.
Our presence on popular social networking websites have attracted the attention of industry leaders, Facebook and Myspace. In 2009, Raising Malawi will work hand-in-hand with the non-profit sectors of these sites, Facebook Causes and Myspace Impact, to create innovative communication and fundraising tools for our volunteers. Facebook and Myspace continue to reshape the ways in which people communicate and receive information. With these new relationships, Raising Malawi will reach the largest number of people in the most cost-effective way.
Going Global: The future is now.
In April, I had the privilege of representing Raising Malawi at the Unite for Sight 5th Annual International Health Conference at Yale University. The conference brought together some of the worlds brightest minds, including Raising Malawi champions Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Dr. Jim Yong Kim, to discuss public health, medicine, social entrepreneurship, nonprofits and philanthropy in the developing world.
In September, Raising Malawi took part in the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting in New York. The Clinton Global Initiative gathers a diverse group of the world's most distinguished leaders from government, business, and civil society to examine today's most pressing global challenges and transform that awareness into tangible action. In addition, Raising Malawi was included in the CGI Exchange, during which we were able to interface with ninety-nine other forward-thinking NGO's.
Raising Malawi was also invited to the first annual meeting of our partner organization, Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ Millennium Promise. The event’s guest of honor was none other than the President of Malawi, Mr. Bingu wa Mutharika. He spoke about the Millennium Development Goals for Malawi and praised the success of the Millennium Villages, including Raising Malawi’s ambitious project at Gumulira.
Zikomo means ‘Thank you’ in Chichewa.
It is not an easy time for our planet. Violence and chaos still threaten our largest cities and tiniest villages. Children still suffer from hunger, mothers despair, and people die everyday from easily preventable diseases. Our work is not nearly complete.
But in the midst of all the chaos, we take a moment for quiet gratitude.
We give thanks to our partner organizations, our dedicated volunteers and generous donors, and most of all to the children of Malawi who teach us so much about gratitude, resilience, and hope. During this holiday season we wish them, and the entire world, a joyous and peaceful New Year.
We thank you for your continued support of Raising Malawi.
Sincerely,
Philippe van den Bossche
If you want to help, don't forget, you can order Kristen Ashburn's companion photobook to the documentary, "I Am Because We Are." It costs $50. Kristen is donating her portion ($25/book) to Raising Malawi. If I somehow put it on your radar and you end up buying one, please let me know so I can count it towards my goal.
