Ntenjera Community Day Secondary School: The story of our sewing machine

While we in the UK struggle with the cost of living and fuel prices, Malawi is in the middle of one of its worst fuel shortages in years, with limited reserves and too little foreign currency to import more. The shortage has affected our support for projects, especially those where we provide sewing machines.

Sewing machines are among the most practical tools we send to the projects we support. They allow communities to produce cheap, reusable sanitary pads, and projects often make school uniforms too. Reusable pads matter because commercial ones are too expensive for many families. Reliable machines are hard to source locally, so we buy and import them from the UK.

This shipment is bound for a project in Lunzu. Think Malawi is working with Mzati Youth Organisation on a six-month Menstrual Hygiene Management project at Ntenjera Community Day Secondary School, where girls' attendance in the older classes drops to as low as 30% at month-end, mainly because of a lack of period supplies, and over 300 girls from low-income households struggle to access reusable sanitary pads.

The sewing machines are central to the project. They will be used by a local mother group to produce reusable sanitary pads and school uniforms, alongside the renovation of six girls' wash and changing rooms. The aim is to cut absences caused by lack of sanitary pads from 30% to 5%, and income from small-scale businesses is meant to pay for machine maintenance and materials such as cloth and thread, so the project can sustain itself.

With Malawi being landlocked the sewing machines were shipped to Beira in Mozambique and then by road to Lilongwe, a journey of roughly 900 km. In July the container was loaded onto a feeder ship for Beira, and by the end of August the machines were ready for collection in Lilongwe, as pictured below:

From there they still had to travel to Blantyre and on to Lunzu and this was delayed due to fuel and finding someone to take the sewing machines to Lunzu and the school. Finally, at the end of October, the sewing machine arrived at Ntenjera Community Day Secondary School and were handed over by staff. Pictured below is Think Malawi trustee Precious handing over the sewing machine to the school:

The delays to our sewing machines highlights how difficult the past few years have been in Malawi. The fuel crisis follows the US decision in 2025 to cut foreign aid, which was projected to reduce US assistance to Malawi by around 59% and cost the country about $177 million in foreign currency inflows. Analysts projected that nearly half a million additional Malawians would fall below the poverty line as a result.

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