Building Classrooms, Building Futures: The Full Impact

The outside learning area for students

Last year, Think Malawi raised £16,000 for Mthawira Primary School through a successful Crowdfunder and various community fundraising efforts. These funds supported the construction of two new classrooms, built under the expert supervision of our partner, the Umodzi Youth Organisation (UYO).

Mthawira Primary School had faced long-standing issues to due to overcrowded classrooms and a lack of appropriate learning spaces. These two new classrooms now provide a safe, comfortable learning environment for 120 students at a time, bringing the school’s total to five blocks and ten classrooms.

Since being handed over in May, these classrooms have allowed for an increased enrolment of 13% with 1,042 of the 1,597 students able to learn inside.

To give everyone an equal opportunity the new classrooms are being used on a rota with 70 students per classroom to ensure no one misses out. Additionally, during the rainy seasons students attend morning and afternoon sessions, meaning no one has to learn outside.

The newly constructed classrooms

These classrooms have facilitated a significant improvement in the students' education. Notably 91% of primary school students completed their education with all of the students sitting for national exams.

For girls especially, none of the students have dropped out of the school due to early marriages or unwanted pregnancies and the overall drop-out rate has fallen by nearly half, from 15% to 7%.

It is great to highlight these statistics, which show the positive impact these two classrooms are having on the 1,500 students of Mthawira Primary School. Think Malawi has kept you updated through out the entire project, from the Crowdfunder, to the handing over of the classrooms, and the final report on the improvements the students have seen.

We will continue updating our readers on our projects throughout this year on this website, however, there are other ways to also stay updated through our social media such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X or join our monthly newsletter.

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