Please donate to my Team Dayā fundraising effort – all funds go directly to building schools. If you are curious about Building Change with Team Dayā, please contact our Head of Recruiting Jaryd Knutsen.
By Team Dayā member Kerri Olson
When Jay Sears asked if I would like to join a team headed to Malawi to build a primary school, there was only one right answer. My family and I had lived in Blantyre, Malawi when I was very young. It is the place that holds my earliest childhood memories, and I had never been back.
I remember my father saying that the most rewarding part of his job in the U.S. Embassy in the early 1970s was working with rural Malawian communities to help them build a primary school for the children in their community. I knew that this was the perfect opportunity for me to finally go back to Malawi, and to give back to a country that was so important to my family.
What stood out to me immediately was the similarity between the model used by Team Dayā and the partnership model from 50 years ago that my Dad had described. Today, around 70% of Malawians live in extreme poverty. Over the past 50 years, the population of Malawi has grown from five million to 20 million people, which means that there is an even greater need now for more schools to ensure that every child in Malawi has the opportunity for an education that can help lift their community out of poverty.
The community where we built our school was chosen by Team Dayā’s Malawi-based partner buildOn. The village of Nchetana showed their commitment to education by agreeing to provide land, labor and local materials including supplying the bricks needed to construct the school. They also committed to sending equal numbers of boys and girls to school.
Using funds raised by Team Dayā, buildOn supplied the engineer and skilled laborers to assist in construction, and purchased materials such as the roof, doors, windows and desks. Once the school is completed, the teachers will be provided by the Malawian Ministry of Education.
On July 1st our team of eight made our way to Malawi. Landing at Lilongwe airport in the middle of the night, what first struck me was how dark the landscape was, even near the capital city. Overall, only about 15% of Malawians have access to electricity, and in rural areas that drops to 5%. Despite the late hour and our very delayed arrival, we were warmly greeted by our local trek leader Vitu, who made us feel so welcome.
The next day, we headed north to the region of Kasungu, where we met the rest of our Malawi-based buildOn team. We had a Chichewa language lesson and cultural orientation, and went shopping at the local market to buy chitenjes, traditional long skirts that we would wear for the opening ceremony in the community.
Full of excitement, the next day we headed for Nchetana, a rural community about an hour from Kasungu town. As we turned down the dirt road that leads to the community, we were greeted by hundreds of children, singing and smiling and waving branches. They escorted us all the way to their school, where the whole community was waiting. After lots of singing and dancing and speeches, everyone signed a covenant and we broke ground. With formalities concluded, we were introduced to our host families, and settled in.
Each morning, after group stretches and songs with the assembled workforce, the workday would begin. Tasks we all shared included: digging the foundation and latrines, carrying bricks from the kiln, carrying buckets of sand from a dry streambed outside the village, and lugging buckets of water.
All work was done manually, mostly using the villagers’ own farming tools, and there wasn’t a machine in sight. The women of the community taught us how to carry our loads in their traditional way, using buckets balanced on our heads. It was humbling to discover that they could carry twice as much weight as we could, often with their babies on their backs, and always singing and dancing while they worked to encourage each other.
After the workday was over, we would spend the afternoon experiencing and learning about life in the community. One of the highlights was playing games with the children. We brought Jenga, Connect 4 and Uno, games which are easy to play even with a language barrier. Children would crowd onto the small front porch of our hosts’ home, and we had fun playing together and practicing our Chichewa phrases with the kids, while they shyly tried out the English phrases they’ve been learning in school.
By the third day of construction, we were already laying cinder blocks and applying mortar, and the walls were taking shape. I was amazed at how streamlined the process was and how quickly construction can progress with so many motivated helpers. Too soon, it was time for Team Dayā to leave, but the work will continue at an impressive pace. With at least 30 community members working 6 days a week, the school block should be finished within 8 weeks.
Currently, school only goes up to 6th grade in Nchetana. Approximately 100 5th and 6th graders have lessons sitting on the dirt floor of a straw structure with a very leaky thatched roof. Once the new school block is completed, the greatly improved learning conditions for Grades 5 and 6 will almost certainly result in increased enrollment, bringing back children who had previously dropped out of school. And crucially, the community will be able to use the old straw structure to extend the school to 7th and 8th grade, thereby providing a path to secondary school and future opportunities both inside and outside the village.
One of the most memorable parts of the experience was at the end of our time in Kasungu, when we visited a nearby village that had completed their new school in March. It was so exciting to see the enthusiasm in the community, where primary school enrollment has already risen from 700 to 1,000 children.
Additionally, the new building has enabled them to start adult literacy classes with buildOn’s help. One hundred and seventy adults who didn’t have a chance to go to school when they were young are now learning reading, writing and basic math. We could clearly see how education is already creating a cycle of change in this community and how it can help lift them out of poverty. That cycle is now underway in Nchetana too, with the new school block that Team Dayā and its supporters helped build. For everyone on Team Dayā, it was a powerful, joyful, and unforgettable experience to be part of this process of Building Change.
Please donate to my Team Dayā fundraising effort – all funds go directly to building schools. If you are curious about Building Change with Team Dayā, please contact our Head of Recruiting Jaryd Knutsen.
