May Newsletter

New clothes, Birthday cake and much more!

Table of Contents

BAHASI’s Plan of Action

Our main focuses at BAHASI for June are:

  1. Fundraising to build a fence

    • One of our goals for BAHASI in 2025 has been to move our Girls into the new girls hostel. This hostel is going to give the kids much needed privacy and space and will make their living space much cleaner and comfortable.

    • Currently, without the fence protecting our children from the road, we cannot in good conscience move them into the new building. Find out more in our struggles section

  2. Female Empowerment Tailoring Programme

    We aim to have our tailoring programme in full swing by June! We are so excited to be able to share valuable skills that promote self-sustainability and will majorly benefit the lives of women in our community. Read about what we have been doing to prepare for this project and more about what this project is in our updates section.

  3. Youth Development Club

    Our Youth Club is officially back up and running! Throughout June, we want to maintain consistency and implement a clear plan and structure to ensure every young person learns, grows, and has fun. We hope to have some fun youth club activities in the upcoming months, like art clubs, sports groups and life skills development. Find out about our may activities in our highlights section!

Updates

  1. ECD programme

    with our new classrooms up and running the ECD programme is thriving and the kids are so happy with their new classrooms.

  1. Women’s Empowerment Tailoring Programme

    The tailoring programme is ready to commence on the 11th of June. If you would like to further support this programme with materials and projects please look at our how to section.

  2. Teachers Wages

    Due to a new, generous monthly donor we are now able to give our staff an official wage! This is a huge step forward in the development of BAHASI as now the staff will not be paid an allowance and labelled as volunteers but will be paid a stable monthly wage that allows them to be legal staff of BAHASI. This will ensure that the staff of BAHASI have legitimate contracts, and each member of staff will have a standard to abide by that will be enforced by legal documents, meaning the quality of work done by BAHASI and its staff will improve and the help we can give to the community increase.

Shout-outs!

A big thanks to our Donors and Visitors this month:

  • Harriet Woodward

  • DDD and PC Charitable Trust

  • Blantyre Baptist Church

  • Malawi Travel

  • Reena Pushotaim

  • Amit Kakkad

  • Gift of the Givers

  • Kelfoods

  • Mukadam family

  • Emilia Vocelic

  • Danniel Karinam

  • Saad Ahmed

  • Ellie MacKenzie

  • Fiona Rochford

This month we have celebrated the Birthdays of:

  • Theresa Wilson - to find out more visit her profile!

  • Rhoda Martin - to find out more visit her profile!

  • Triza Bulaziyo - to find out more visit her profile!

  • Prince Kaunda - to find out more visit his profile!

Visitors

We are so thankful for Gift of the Givers who have donated a huge supply of clothes and shoes for the children at BAHASI. This donation has significantly improved the quality of life for our children, as they previously wore clothes that were damaged and incredibly old. Gift of the Givers continuously support the work we do, and we are so grateful that they have enabled us to help those most in need in our community. The children at BAHASI are so pleased with their new clothes and shoes. If you also want to support us and bring smiles to the faces of our children please visit our how to section.

  • Emilia Vocelic and Daniel Karinam came to visit our kids and brought a donation of food and supplies. Their donation and presence has brought us so much happiness at BAHASI. With the exam period upon us the exercise books and pens helped our standard 8 and form 2 kids be well prepared to sit their exams.

Highlights

  1. Completion of exams

    Our Standard 8 and Form 2 kids are now officially finished with their exams! we are so proud of them for getting through the hard days of revision and putting their all in towards their futures. A big thankyou to Jacaranda School for Orphans for their amazing support of our kids and getting them to a place where they are set up to succeed.

Ndaona- second from the right at the back

  1. Haviva’s Birthday

    on the 23rd of May we had a day of dancing cake and fun to celebrate our volunteers Haviva’s Birthday. A special thankyou to Saad Ahmed for donating the cake! If you would like to give our kids a treat on the birthday contact us and we will let you know how.

  1. Police Visit

    Bangwe Police came to visit our kids to talk to them about staying safe and how to be the best citizen they can be. This visit really got the kids thinking and hopefully the police will come back regularly to continue to open a dialogue to us about being safe and smart.

  1. Funerals

    It is with heavy hearts that we share the sad news that two members of community passed away this month. At BAHASI we stand together with our community to support in any way that we can and of course attended the funeral. A big thankyou to Fiona Rochford who donated food and money to the families, bringing great comfort to our community in a period of mourning. We were also able to share some firewood to help in this hard period.

Struggles

Our on-going struggle at BAHASI is having a reliable income to keep the charity running smoothly. Because of our lack of funds we struggle to sustain the programmes which are essential to the wellbeing of those in BAHASI’s care and those we support in the community.

Building a fence - We have been trying to move our Girls into the new hostel for the last 5 month, however, without the fence protecting our children from the road, we cannot in good conscience move them into the new building. This hostel is going to give the kids much needed privacy and space, improving their quality of life drastically. Without the necessary funds it is near impossible to construct a wall in good time.

Feeding Programme - With the rising prices of food in Malawi donors are becoming less able to donate to our feeding programme. This is meaning we are having to provide our kids with less filling and less high quality meals. We have tried reaching out to local stores and businesses but we are receiving very little support. Some of our younger children are even getting sick from lack of nutrition.

How you can support us

Transport- A long term solution to our transport problem is to buy BAHASI our own bus so that we no longer need to rely on small minibuses to take our kids to and from activities. As mentioned in the BAHASI’s Plan of Action, a big goal of ours in 2025 is to really push fundraising for this bus. So, a great way to support us with this project would be to contact us if you: know of any capital grants that would fund transportation projects; are interested in supporting BAHASI in holding some kind of fundraiser event; are able to help us source a bus; want to donate towards a bus for BAHASI.

However; to ensure that our children continue to get an education we need short term support. If you are able to help please visit our donation page or contact us to set up a donation. Our OVC’s have a bright future so please consider helping us out monthly to get our kids to reach their full potential.

Girls Hostel- We are needing donors to help construct the fence for our new girls hostel. we are currently trying to raise £1500 to start and begin construction. If you are interested in helping you can donate here or contact us and we will share our project plan with you.

Activities- The swimming programme costs around 40,000 MK per month with is around £20, if you would like to fund this programme, please donate here.

Feeding Programme- To support our feeding programme please get in contact with our staff if you’d like to donate produce (rice, beans, vegetables, meat, etc), or if you’d like to sponsor a child’s food for a week you can donate £2 here

Community Empowerment- If you are interested in checking out our other programmes that support the wider community and give our OVC’s new and exciting experiences please visit our linktree.

Contact us