By Vincent Khonje:
After staying for years without seeing their primary school develop, communities at Kaphatika have realized that they can erect classroom blocks on their own.
Kaphatika primary school despite being one of the oldest schools in Ntchisi, only has two classroom blocks and the rest of classes are either under a tree or some grass shacks.
According to group village head Kaphatika the school dates back to the 1970s but nothing was being done to have classroom blocks.
“There are only some shacks and two classroom blocks that were built by the catholic church, this only mean one thing and that is low standard of education,” said Kaphatika.
However, after being instilled with an idea of self help by the Pellottines Catholic Father, Dumisani Nkhoswe, the community stood up and is managing to erect a classroom block.
“We decided to have community members contribute five kilograms of soy beans, and after collecting and selling we raised K1.4 million which we used to buy cement,” said Nkhoswe.
The project used builders from the same community, and the bricks and sand used was also contributed by the community itself.
The classroom project awaits roofing which has been estimated at K3.6 million for the children in the area to benefit.
As part of giving back to communities, a University of Malawi bachelor of social sciences class of 99 put together some funds and supported Kaphatika community classroom project.
Chairperson of the group Aubrey Dothi said they raised among themselves K1.7 million which has been used to buy paint and cement.
“We were impressed with the self help initiative by the community and thought of helping, this is a good initiative and if replicated can help most communities have development structures,” said Dothi.
With mentorship from the Pallottines Fathers, the community also has an early childhood development (ECD) centre, run by the community volunteers.
