VINJERU HISTORY

Vinjeru is a registered charity established in November 1999 by Walije Gondwe, a Malawian author resident in the UK, and registered in December 2000. Vinjeru aims to advance the education of young people in Malawi, generally under the age of 30, mainly through collecting education resources donated by individuals in the UK and sending these to schools particularly in remote rural areas of Malawi. Vinjeru also raises awareness of poverty and illiteracy in Malawi by producing and distributing leaflets and maintaining a website. The word ‘vinjeru’ is a local word for intelligence/knowledge/wisdom/ academic brilliance.

AIMS

Vinjeru’s work is undertaken to achieve the following:

• Enable and encourage more children to attend school and others to stay on longer.
• Free the parents from making difficult choices: whether to feed their families or buy education items.
• Allow some children to fulfil their potential and achieve personal and family independence.
• Enable people to – at least – become literate and make informed choices about issues affecting their daily lives.

Current activities to date have clearly focused on providing schools with donated resources including books, notebooks, pencils, pens, rulers and other essential items. Primary schools are the main but not only focus. Parents find it almost impossible to obtain these in rural Malawi and it is normal for a child to be sent home from school because she or he does not have a pencil for instance. Computers and typewriters have also been donated to schools, to the Chancellor College in Zomba and the University of Livingstonia and other higher education institutions. The Co-ordinator of Vinjeru visits Malawi once a year, staying for a number of months to organise distribution of the goods, to monitor and evaluate the work.

THE BIG PROBLEM

Lack of office space and space for storage of the donated goods is an on-going problem.

Currently all Vinjeru’s work is undertaken in the Coordinator’s family accommodation free of charge. Here the donations are stored until shipment, so in effect the success of the organisation has resulted in untold inconvenience to the family.

We are most grateful to Key Air & Sea for volunteering to collect the goods as the house filled up and feeing up some space for the next delivery. Without this kind of help it would be impossible to carry on with this most valuable work, which is greatly appreciated by the Malawian people. We do not wish to appear as if we are taking the company’s generosity for granted.

VINJERU TRUSTEES NEED

• Money to rent suitable premises to use as office and for storage of the donations;
• Donations in kind in the form of office/storage space in the London area;
• Money to build an office in Malawi.

Vinjeru’s work is very much appreciated by the in Malawian community and we wish to continue supporting these people

We have no paid staff. However, we have the advantage of having a very focused remit and the knowledge that whatever we collect does get delivered to and used by schoolchildren in Malawi. We will provide reports on our work in Malawi and explain exactly how any money you might decide to donate to us is being spent.