Ray of light

FERGUS stares up at the camera from under his hoodie with big brown eyes, Bethany sucks her thumb, while Chris, in a Celtic top donated from Scotland, is too shy to smile. They are beautiful children but poor, with no parents and few prospects. You are a multi- millionaire with an altruistic itch to scratch. Would you take one home?

This is exactly what Madonna did after visiting this orphanage in Malawi. The pop star whisked away a little boy named David Banda to her mansion in London and the rest is history, or in this case, a lot of headlines.

The Material Girl was criticised for treating the Home of Hope orphanage as a supermarket where she could pick the "cutest" child, and for riding roughshod over the country's adoption laws. Even today, it is not certain two-year-old David will be able to stay in her custody until a review by Malawian social services is completed.

In response, the 49-year-old argued that the child has a much better future with her than in a country where life expectancy is just 37. The budding "celanthropist" - that's celebrity philanthropist - also promised to help the children of Malawi, both financially and spiritually, by setting up a charity she called Raising Malawi.

But while the world's attention has been focused on the continuing domestic saga over the adoption of David Banda, many have forgotten about Madonna's promise to help the one million orphans she left behind. Just over a year after Madonna adopted David, I went to Malawi to see what the involvement of one of the richest women in the world has done for the children in one of its poorest countries.

My first stop was the Home of Hope. The mission-run orphanage was set up almost ten years ago by a reverend whose own children had died of AIDS. Now it is the focus of the international media and veiled in secrecy. Indeed, it is necessary to get permission from the Minister of Information herself, through Scottish government contacts, to gain access. Journalists are forbidden to mention the M-word. The children are well aware of their benefactor but are schooled to remain silent if asked questions. There have even been reports of orphans throwing stones at members of the media to protect the privacy of the pop star.

It is with some trepidation, then, that I approach the orphanage in Mchinji, a poor town on the border with Zambia. Located around 10km up a bone-shuddering track, it is difficult to imagine a privileged star and her bodyguards being driven here in blacked-out 4x4s, past mud huts and women carrying huge bags of maize meal on their heads. Certainly, Madonna was shocked when she first arrived. She described dazed orphans lying on the ground in a pool of urine with flies buzzing around their heads - but the children who run to greet us from a complex of smart brick buildings appear happy and healthy.

The orphanage, set on 40 hectares of land, cares for more than 700 children, 500 of whom live on-site. They stay in dormitories with indoor flushing toilets, a luxury most of them could not hope to experience in their home villages, and there is both a primary and secondary school on-site.

However, all this was achieved well before Madonna got here, mostly with donations from Canada, but also from Scotland and the rest of the UK. Volunteers from around the world come to work with the orphans and three children were adopted by Canadian families previously. "Madonna has just joined us," says Victor Chikalogwe, programme co-ordinator of the Home of Hope. With some pride he shows us around, and we see the schoolroom where teenagers study the Bible and the kitchen where toddlers line up patiently for a bowl of maize porridge.

The obvious poverty Madonna found is absent and Chikalogwe says Raising Malawi has helped considerably. However, there are still serious problems. In one dorm we visit, a little girl has recently died from pneumonia because of a lack of medicine and another child does not look well, although we are told she is just sleeping. A "house mother", usually a widow from the local community, looks after 11 children in seven beds, so many have to share.

Raising Malawi committed itself to providing "the immediate and secondary immediate needs" of the Home of Hope by January this year, but Chikalogwe says the orphanage is still desperately short of medicine and baby formula. It appears that AIDS orphans are not as easy to save as Madonna might have hoped.

Nowhere is this more obvious than at the Consol Homes Orphan Care Centre, the next project we visit. The daycare centre for 4,000 orphans in Mphandula, near Lilongwe, was opened by the pop star amid a frenzied photo shoot in April, during her first visit to the country since the adoption. But when we visit a few months later, the gleaming collection of brick buildings stands empty because Raising Malawi have not yet made running costs available. The only sign of Madonna is a scrawled heart in the visitors' book.

It also emerges that Consol Homes had to buy a cheaper car than expected because Raising Malawi refused to increase a donation to include import duty. As Home of Hope has learned to deal with paparazzi, so Alfred and Jacinta Chapomba, who run Consol Homes, have discovered that their association with Madonna has not come without cost.

The homes look after 12,500 orphans around the country through a network of community centres where children are fed and supported. But when news of Madonna's adoption broke, Mr Chapomba was forced to visit every village chief to reassure them his organisation would not be selling babies to pop stars.

Kim Keating, one of the board members at Consol Homes, says Madonna - with her band of advisors and lawyers - should have known better. "She is one of the world's most powerful women," she says. "She has no excuse for ignorance. She has a duty to be aware of the impact she is going to make."

Madonna's relative inexperience in the complex field of development also riles Keating, who says Raising Malawi will achieve little without the expertise and help of more established charities. "The reality is so far removed from what she [Madonna] is saying she is doing," she adds.

Mr and Mrs Chapomba are too grateful to complain. But they have no such problems with other donors, including Scots philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter, who is only interested in "sustainable" projects. He sends unwanted clothes every few months to help Consol Homes develop a retail business.

There is also the tricky problem of the "spiritual help" being provided by Raising Malawi. In a tradition stretching back to Scots missionary David Livingstone, charity has its roots in religion, in this case the Jewish sect Kabbalah. Madonna set up Raising Malawi with Michael Berg, the head of the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles. Indeed, one of the main tenets of the charity is to provide "psycho-social" support to orphans through Spirituality for Kids (SFK). Raising Malawi insists the programme is not religious, but rather designed to teach children robbed of parental guidance "how to love again". But in a deeply Christian country, where the sexually explicit past exploits of Mrs Ritchie have already caused mutterings at church, SFK just might be a step too far.

Keating is upset by what she sees as "the arrogance" of Madonna's approach. "Who the hell are they, a bunch of Californian millionaires, to tell a bunch of Malawians - who already look after more than a million orphans - how to look after children?" she asks.

To find out more, we visit the Social Rehabilitation Centre in central Lilongwe, with its cracked windows and bare concrete floors, where Madonna was on hand in April to see a group of children graduate in SFK.

There are no desks or chairs but a classroom full of women have come to be schooled in "empowerment". Like the staff at Home of Hope, people know better than to talk to journalists about Madonna, but teacher Sylvia Namakhwa, SFK Malawi's executive director, agrees to meet later to explain the programme.

In the headquarters of SFK in a downtown shopping centre, Namakhwa recites her mission statement: "The project mission is to offer hope and support and empowerment to children affected by HIV poverty."

For most orphans the most direct challenge is getting enough to eat, followed by money for clothing and schooling. But Namakhwa insists orphans also need spiritual care. On her desk are leaves scrawled with "motivational notes" in children's handwriting such as "I will have more friends". Classes can include using a candle to illustrate the "sharing of light" and sugar and salt to demonstrate the difference between good and bad. A recent "inspirational" trip was made to the Coca-Cola factory.

"When you talk about orphans, it is not just materials they need to fill the gap left by their parents," says Namakhwa. "They need somebody to love, or even just someone to talk to."

Eight Malawians have travelled to Los Angeles to be trained in SFK and Raising Malawi must be putting a considerable amount of its funds into the programme. So far 700 children and 175 guardians have been trained and there are plans for more. For those who see something more sinister in the programme, it is worth pointing out that most of the teachers are devout Christians. Also, established charities such as Save the Children allow classes to be carried out at their premises and seem to see it as a fairly harmless, if wacky, form of self-help.

Philippe van den Bossche, Raising Malawi executive director, insists SFK has nothing to do with religion. The charity's stated purpose is to "raise the children of Malawi from poverty into prosperity, from sickness into health, from powerlessness into empowerment".

Unlike most charities, it is difficult to find out about the work of Raising Malawi, despite offering the oxygen of publicity. Perhaps it is not necessary when you have a star on your books who has pledged £1.5 million and is working on a film about Malawi.

"She [Madonna] is inextricably tied to all of our activities," says van den Bossche. "Not only as the founder of the charity but as a major donor and somebody who has adopted a child from this country. It is very close to her heart that every child gets the help they need."

But what about the children who are not being helped by Madonna? Our final visit is to Mtandere Village in Lilongwe. Like most orphanages in Malawi, it is funded through the church and "God Loves You" is painted on every bunk bed. Staff insist none of the 150 children are up for adoption, but other than that it is similar to the Home of Hope. In general, the government of Malawi wants orphans to be cared for within extended families rather than creating a "lost tribe" of children disconnected from communities.

Workers with Voluntary Services Overseas take us to see a typical example in Ekwendeni, a town in the north. "Agogo" or Granny Gere, 89, has never heard of Madonna. She looks after her five grandchildren and one great grandchild - after her 13-year-old granddaughter was raped - in a tiny mud brick house. To survive she relies on hand-outs and sells crocheted hats she has made to local church groups.

Where the extended family cannot look after orphans, the community gathers to help. Oxfam takes us to see an example in rural Lilongwe. Here a group of women defied local prejudice to set up a support group for people with HIV. Then, when members started dying, they started an orphan network. The organisation now has 264 orphans registered but can only afford to support 95.

Volunteers who are themselves HIV positive take us to visit the Goliati family, including 14-year-old Dyana, who with her grandmother looks after a family of five in a mud hut the size of a garden shed. Dyana and other children like her are often the sole providers for younger siblings, working at the local quarry or brewing beer. Some are HIV positive or ill with conditions such as tuberculosis. All would benefit from financial or, indeed, spiritual support.

In an interview with Vanity Fair recently, Madonna said she wanted to save all children in such circumstances. It is a noble - if ambitious - sentiment and her charity, for all its faults, is making a contribution towards that goal.

But it is important not to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is a human tragedy that not even Madonna can alleviate. Some 14 per cent of the population is infected with HIV in Malawi and 84,000 children are orphaned every year.

Helen Magombo, an Oxfam advocacy worker, says the world cannot leave the problem to pop stars alone.

"Madonna has raised awareness," she says. "But there were children needing help before she got here and there are still children needing help."

• For more information, visit www.raisingmalawi.org; www.oxfam.org.uk; www.vso.org.uk