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Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Malawi mission calls students

ELEVEN Forres Academy students who are members of the Friends of Luchenza Action Group (FLAG) are hoping to travel to Malawi next summer.

The students will help with a project to try and make living and studying conditions better for children from the Luchenza orphanage.

Forres Academy has been involved in the project with Malawi since Miss Liz Stewart, who is a home economics teacher at the school, went to the country as part of a teachers' study tour organised and funded by the Scottish Executive to strengthen the bond between Scotland and Malawi in 2007.

Since then, Ms Stewart, has had a keen interest in helping the children of Luchenza, which is in a deprived part of Malawi, and has worked tirelessly to raise funds.

As part of the ongoing fundraising drive, Forres Academy are sending four members of staff to Luchenza with the students next July.

The four: Mrs Mcrae, Mr Alan Donnelly, Mr Pott and Miss Liz Stewart said they were looking forward to the trip.

Group members are raising £1,600 by themselves to pay for the trip and a new school block in Luchenza.

As well as Forres Academy, Mallaig High School, another member of FLAG, and residents of Luchenza are also taking part in the visit and will be raising funds, for the Mulanje mission in Malawi.

This classroom at the Luchenza community school will be significantly upgraded thanks to a project being organised by Forres Academy.

The Luchenza community have so far raised £600 towards their community project, which is a significant figure for a country said to be the eighth poorest country in the world.

The project to improve classroom and community facilities will make a great difference to the lives of the people living there. Meanwhile, the pupils going to Malawi also hope to gain some valuable experience during their visit, learning about the culture and way of life of the African country. As well as raising funds, the students have to devise a lesson that they can teach to the children or the teachers in Luchenza, as well as producing a resource pack to promote awareness of the challenges and opportunities of life as an African student.

The Forres community have also got on board with the project. John McCruden from the Chapter One restaurant has already contributed some funds towards the project by selling pizza with a topping invented by academy students. He is planning a sponsored run from Inverness to Forres accompanied by some of the pupils from Forres Academy and Mallaig High on November 7 to further boost the fund.

Students going to Malawi are also taking their own entertainment with them, taking a variety of musical instruments to entertain the community and are hoping to learn a little about Malawian music while they are there.

Another aim of the trip is for the FLAG group to help the Luchenza community school start an enterprise project, which would enable the school to generate their own funds for the orphans in the community where the majority of people are under 16 years of age.

Construction of a new classroom, which is part of the academy project, means that class sizes can be cut from 100 to 50 pupils, signficantly improving the learning experience.

1 comment:

Luchenza said...

Thank you for posting this.
The FLAG group in Forres and Mallaig will gain as much as they give when we visit Luchenza Community Day Secondary next June.
Liz Stewart.