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Small Change project in Malawi
“Matrix on Board is privileged to be able to support the Small Change project in Malawi.
We encourage all our site visitors to read more about this project and find out about the people who live in Mzuzu.”
Pat & Johanna Fitzpatrick write:
This first piece is taken from the 2007 Small Change calendar we produced last year. We raised 35,000 euros and were able to buy a plot of land and build a new Day Care Centre for the orphans in Area 1B. The parish committee involved with the orphanage have called it "Temwanani", which in the local language, Tumbuka, means "Love Oneanother". When we were there this summer, we saw the start of the building and helped lay the foundation stone. The roof is being put on now. You can see more about this on the Ungweru site. The rest of the money is being used to help start small businesses, to pay for fertiliser for crops, food, school fees for children who otherwise could not go, vegetable gardens for villages, and to ensure that all the children at the Day Care Centre have at least one meal a day.
Small Change Project Calendar 2007
In the summer of 2005 we had the wonderful opportunity of spending two months in a small town in N. Malawi, called Mzuzu. With the encouragement, advice and support of our friend, Fr John Ryan, a St Patrick’s Missionary priest who has spent the last 27 years in Africa, we worked with groups in his parish of St Augustine’s. Patrick taught a postgraduate course in Mzuzu University.
The Msiki Home Based Care Committee and their ‘clients’
The committee is a wonderful group of men and women in one of the out-stations beyond Mzuzu town, who have very little themselves, but who organise help through visiting those who have even less.
The Dunduzu AIDS Support Group
This remarkable group of people, all of whom have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, have come together to support one another and to try to educate people in their area about AIDS. There is huge stigma attached to the illness and this in itself prevents people from talking about it or being tested, and so transmission is rampant.
The Area 1B Orphanage
Not an orphanage in the western traditional sense, this shell of a building is where the pre-school children of Area 1B, who have been orphaned by AIDS, gather each morning. Most live with grandparents or extended family and the parish runs this orphanage so that these little ones will be given some advantages. Most mornings there is a bowl of porridge for each of them, and they learn English through songs and rhymes. Two young teachers, Margaret and Love, a cook and some other helpers work here every day, without any pay.
‘Ungweru House’ (Light House)
Fr John used some of the fund we brought with us to buy a derelict group of buildings, and has now transformed them into a Youth Centre for meetings, inter-faith activities and courses.  Mark and Ciarán also gave classes in English and Drama in the parish centre, and Johanna gave a couple of talks to the Counselling class in Mzuzu University.
When we were leaving Malawi, in August 2005, the people we had worked with all asked us the same thing. “Please don’t forget us when you go home to Ireland.” We haven’t, and we won’t. Neither would we ever want to. The aim of our project “Small Change” is to continue sending our ‘small change’ to Mzuzu, knowing, as we do now, that it can help to make huge changes there, to improve the lives of people living with illness and in extreme poverty.
We invite you to join us in this project, and this calendar is one way of doing that. Your donation will go directly to the people in Mzuzu, some of whom you will see in these photos as you turn the pages to mark the beginning of each new month. But giving money is not the whole idea behind the calendar. We promised not to forget them, but we also want you to meet these amazing people, to have their – mainly smiling – faces in your kitchens, offices, and school rooms. Small change has to happen in this part of the world and in our own lives just as much as in theirs.
The Account details for any donations to the Small Change Project:
MZUZU Account No: 42780121
Bank of Ireland, 70 Patrick Street, Cork, Ireland.
Bank sort code: 90 28 13
BIC or Swift code: BOFI IE2D
IBAN: IE11 BOFI 9028 1342 7801 21
You can send donations, no matter how large or small, (anonymously if you prefer), either directly to this account,
or to us at home 34 Woodbrook Avenue, Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland.
The following two pdf documents are made available here for those who might be interested to read more about the diary of the Small Change project during 2007.
We realise that a lot of people are involved in fund-raising for different projects and want to stay doing that, and we really don't expect everyone to have either the time or the inclination to be more involved or even to stay interested. But if you think that you would like to make Small Change your project in the Developing World, we'd love to hear from you.
Pat and Johanna and
Mark, Ciarán, Áine and Maeve
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