The building blocks of development

Startup NGO with Prague roots seeks to further education in sub-Saharan Africa

The preschool program in the village of Juma targets children ages 3-6 and doubles as a training facility for teachers from surrounding villages.

It started on little more than a whim.

"I was just an ordinary girl who finished secondary school, not really interested in anything," says Tereza Mirovičová. "I thought I'd just do something totally crazy."

When that youthful exuberance was met with a little training and a few collaborators, "boNGO" - a nonprofit running preschools, teacher-training programs and community development projects in the sub-Saharan African country of Malawi - was born.

Back in 2005, on a shoestring budget raised "through luck and personal friends," said Mirovičová, the project was launched in Juma, a 300-resident village in Malawi's southern hills, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) outside the country's largest city, Blantyre. The aim was to build a new preschool to serve kids ages 3 to 6. Efforts were initially sidetracked by a little local flavor, including a prominent village member who stole building materials and touted the project as a personal gift to him.

But, back on track after broadening the effort to include more input from the community, and after cutting ties to the local conman, the school opened in October 2006, holds classes daily from 8 a.m. until noon and provides students with one hot meal per day. It also serves as the staging ground for training teachers from 17 surrounding villages.

"The level of teaching was as bad as it could possibly be at the beginning; it was a nursery, not a school," said David Leflar, an American and former English teacher in Prague who now serves as managing director for the project. "The teachers still don't necessarily always grasp the wholistic concept, but the children do. The root of development is education, and the root of education is preschool."

It wasn't long before another nearby village, Kantimbanya, lobbied boNGO to aid them with community projects. This village, further off the main road and less used to dealing with international organizations, had already started ambitious community programs of its own, including four community centers for children and a volunteer network to provide home-based care to the elderly. After talks of cooperation, boNGO agreed to finance the construction of a corn mill, to help locals harvest their crops and contribute to sustainable income that would help finance the other projects for the long term. The mill now generates about $100 (1,870 Kč) per month in net profit and saves villagers from having to trek miles to the nearest alternative mill with 50-kilogram (110-pound) bags of corn on their backs.

Long-term thinking

The main goal of boNGO is to make their projects self-sustainable for the long term, and while this seems to be the case in Kantimbanya, for now, the school in Juma remains dependent on boNGO funds - costing about $120 per month to run. The group has hopes of expanding, and remains mired in bureaucratic wrangling with the Malawian government over registration issues. Located in southeast Africa, Malawi - bordered by Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique - is largely rural and shares the coast of one of Africa's Great Lakes, Lake Malawi, with two neighbors. The average life expectancy, according to the United Nations, is 48 years, and the country has an average annual GNP per capita of $250, according to the World Bank. There was no television channel until 1999, and only about 1 percent of the population of 14.3 million accesses the Internet.

The initial boNGO nest egg of about 2 million Kč, has lasted more than four years but is beginning to run out.

"We have big dreams, but we need money," said Mirovičová, who is back in Prague for the summer trying to secure further funding.

Among the initial plans for expansion is a small weekly "cinema" for screening Western films and promoting dialogue about cultural differences, of which there are many.

"The awkwardness doesn't ever really leave," Leflar said via cell phone in Malawi. "I am 6 foot 5, sometimes with a big ginger beard; so, needless to say, I stand out."

While such cinemas already exist in Malawian cities, they hardly promote "real knowledge about Europe," Mirovičová says, rather a distortion.

"We have a hard time appreciating the good things in Africa, while [Africans] cannot see the bad things about life on our side," she said.

For now, the project moves forward, even as funds dwindle.

"It's not charity; it's a job," Mirovičová says. "I will do it for the rest of my life."