Our first team were a ready-formed group of 10 from Omagh in Northern Ireland, who worked extremely hard over the past 18 months to raise funds to build a feeding centre in the village of Chigwaja. They had some really innovative ideas - such as 'Buy a Brick' sheets, where donors paid £1 to donate a brick to the centre, and Pringles Tube fillers, buying tins to give to friends and asking them to fill them with loose change - raising on average £50 per tin!
Our second team in Malawi worked with Joshua in the semi-rural township of Chimwemwe, helping to make the existing community based care centre a secure and nice environment for the orphans and vulnerable children who use it. Construction, renovation and decoration have all been keeping the team busy - painting on alphabets, numbers and animals!
Part of the building work involved constructing an 18-panel boundary wall. Construction work in rural Malawi is no mean feat without the use of any machinery, and this wall has involved hundreds of man-hours from the team carrying and laying the bricks, mixing the sand, cement and water for the mortar - and not to mention the fiddly and long job of pointing all the brickwork!
It hasn't all been about the building, though, and the volunteers have managed to get stuck into community work as well - playing netball matches and holding a sports day.
In the words of volunteer Alex, "Everyone is really pleased with the feeding centre, the children and the rest of the community were so excited."
Fancy volunteering in Malawi? Click here.
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