Joshua’s Community Based Childcare Centres on film

It's the final video for this week, but this is where it all began for Joshua, with a Community Based Childcare Centre (feeding centre) in Pensulo.

We have now build 20 and still support ten of these with food, training for carers and equipment.

We feed around 1,000 vulnerable children Monday to Friday every week - now that is something to shout about.

The Joshua Health Clinic

The construction of the Joshua clinic began in 2008. With local people working side by side with volunteers from the UK. The fantastic bunch of people involved included 45 Royal Bank of Scotland employees who not worked hard to complete the project from foundations to roof, but also helped raise over £60,000 to do so.

Their work was then supported by a number of smaller groups of Quest and Inspire volunteers who helped with the rendering, plastering, painting, and construction of the auxiliary buildings such as doctors housing.


In 2010 Joshua Orphan and Community Care opened its new maternity, HIV and health centre in Pensulo, serving a wide area and a population of over 40,000. The clinic provides expectant mothers with maternity services as well as treating common diseases such as malaria, pneumonia and HIV/AIDS. Previously the closest clinic had been 8 miles away in Blantyre – too far for people to
get to easily.


It also promotes family planning and acts as an education centre. In 2012 electricity reached the clinic after years of hard work and women no longer have to give birth by candlelight.


Over the years the clinic has proved to be a valuable lifeline to people living in this impoverished rural area.

From the Questoverseas Summer Team

Thanks to Liz Munday for her update from Malawi, keep up the great work guys.

Achimwene!

Having finished our stay in Chillingani, we have just arrived in Pensulo. It was very sad to say goodbye to all of the wonderful children we got on so well with, and the rest of the community, but we have made great memories. We finished building the foundations and walls of the new headteacher's office and staffroom after much hard work and lots of fun and laughter, this was a great achievement. We hope it will be a huge benefit to the teachers.

We also began to refurbish another of the school buildings so it can become a library and we donated a few books at the closing ceremony along with a full netball kit. Alongside the building work and playing with the children we donated plastic sheeting to an elderly lady to help waterproof the roof on her 6 foot by 6 foot mud hut "house".

We struck up a great relationship with the children. Whether it was a game of football dutifully refereed by Alex and Ed or a game of netball with the girls (with some dubious rules) the children were constantly laughing and smiling- trying on our sunglasses, carrying our water bottles and taking countless photos, which we will bore you with soon. They certainly made our stay fun and incredibly exciting, if not very tiring; hence the 8.30 bed times!

Now we have just begun our time in Pensulo our joy to be here is as strong as ever, and we our excited to start our next project, refurbishing a feeding centre amongst other things. We cannot wait to begin the new project and the second half of our trip. We are having so much fun in this amazing country!

Tionana!

Hello from Malawi!!

Almost into our last week of Malawi and we are all still having an amazing time! We have almost finished refurbishing the feeding centre and its kitchen and the boys have been keeping up their carpentry skills with refurbishing the desks for the primary school. The villagers are extremely friendly and always try their best with speaking English to us and trying to teach us Chichewa as well. Ida is cooking us some traditional African dishes such as nsima, veg and kidney beans and even being treated to mandasi which has been going down a treat.

Last Sunday we climbed Michiru Mountain, so an early start was in order to climb to the peak before the hot midday sun was out. The climb was tiring but the view at the top was completely worth it with a stunning bird's eye view of Blantyre and other villages – we could even see Chilingani in the distance! This week has mainly consisted of painting and liming the feeding centre and in our spare time creating educational posters on important issues such as: HIV/AIDS, health and hygiene, Malaria and the benefits of staying in school.

The plan for next week is to spend the first few days decorating the interior of the feeding centre with things such as the alphabet and numbers and then rounding off the end of the week and our time in Malawi with a trip to Lake Malawi for a relaxed few days before flying back home.

Tuck Shop Twix Tackles Poverty

Everyone likes a nice tea break biscuit, a birthday celebration wouldn't be the same without office cakes and Fridays are the perfect excuse for a finger of fudge. But who'd of though our sweet tooth cravings here in the UK could stop hunger in Malawi?

Last year Joshua supporter John Evans decided to do exactly that, by running a Tuck Shop at work and donating all the profits to Joshua. John was a volunteer with QuestOverseas in 2006, helping to build a double classroom block, and in 2012 he tackled the three peaks for Joshua. But in 2013 he decided to take on a different challenge, and he raised an incredible £750 in the process.

This money has been used to support some of the neediest families in Malawi with maize during the "Hungry Season." This is a six month period from roughly November until April, when thousands of families maize supplies are running low and they simply don't have enough food to eat every day.

The money John raised has donated 70 bags of maize to the poorest families during this period - with each bag providing two meals a day for a whole month - This works out at a total of 21,000 meals - incredible!

Chikumbutso Chilumba (pictured) lost his mother when he was just eight years old. Abandoned by his father he and his two siblings are cared for by his grandmother, but she's in her mid-sixties struggles to earn enough money to support them all. As a result on the day I met Chikumbutso in November last year, he had not eaten.

Sometimes Chikumbutso is forced to miss school in order to earn money to ensure the family can eat. But John's Tuck Shop effort has ensured that Chikumbutso doesn’t have to do this, and can stay in school, focus on his studies and work towards his dream of becoming an engineer “Coming to school is important to me because I want a good future.”

We would like to say a huge Thank You to John for his incredible fundraising efforts on behalf of some of the world’s poorest people. Who knew a chocolate treat could do so much good?