Jillian Wolstein raises money to build schools in Malawi

Clevelander Jillian Wolstein felt honored when Malawi villagers gave her a native name, but she was a bit perplexed. The name, "Chifundo," they said, means "messy" in the native language, Chichewa.

As she smiled her thanks, she thought, "Yeah, I'm sort of disheveled here. And I sit in the dirt when I play with the little kids, so I'm probably dirty."

Still, she wondered. "Tell me again what Chifundo means," Wolstein asked.

Only this time, she didn't hear "messy." Her name means "mercy," they said.

Wolstein laughed softly as she recalled the experience, delighting in the joke and touched by the gesture. She earned the honor through her dedication to help a village in the Machinga district near Liwonde National Park in the southern lakes region of the country. Malawi is wedged among Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia in eastern Africa.

She was inspired to work in Malawi in April 2006 while she was flying home from an African safari with her family. She'd been humbled by the deprivation she'd seen in rural African life and realized the blessings she and her family enjoyed. "I'm going back to do something," she told her husband, developer Scott Wolstein.

"We were building an enormous house in Hunting Valley," Jillian Wolstein said, "and I thought we should repay some karmic debt before moving in." Attending fund-raising parties and writing checks to charities suddenly weren't enough, she said.

With $100,000 from the couple's Wolstein Family Foundation, she partnered with Wilderness Safaris, a travel agency, to replace the village's open-air thatched-roof school and mud desks with two sturdy brick buildings with wood desks. The travel agency oversees the school.

Nanthomba School, expected to open by December, will accommodate 320 children, but it is likely to have 600 pupils, she said, because many families moved to the village when they heard a new school was opening. Four of seven teacher homes have been completed. It is customary to house teachers near the schools in Malawi.

The foundation pays the teachers and is financing their education for certification. Their classes are 15 miles away, so the foundation bought bicycles for them. When they pass their exams, the teachers will get to keep their bicycles.