Hi, I'm Chisomo Kalinga, and I'm reaching out to you to support the 2026 fundraiser for Children's Hope Malawi, a remarkable organization founded by my mother, Jean, in our home village in Domasi. Our organization supports vulnerable children and their caretakers in this rural community. This organization has been operating since 2011; however, recent funding cuts around the world are leaving impoverished rural communities such as ours with limited resources to continue our work. We are seeking your help to raise funds for two of our key programs—girl’s education and elderly care—to ensure that we can continue to provide essential services to our community in 2026.

Your donations will directly support vital community intervention work, allowing us to support girls’ retention in school while offering support to their caretakers at home. This includes:

• Provide essential educational resources such as shoes, school uniforms and supplies, and menstrual products to at-risk girls.

• Offer free healthcare, and at-home health visits to most vulnerable elderly and caretakers, ensuring they have the basic necessities to support their families.

Every contribution matters, no matter how small. Please support Children's Hope Malawi and help us create a brighter future for the most vulnerable citizens in our community!

Our fundraiser… $12,345 goal

Our interventions are critical and we need to raise $12,345 to ensure that we can provide care for our girls and elders throughout 2026. Without financial aid, young girls are forced to drop out of school to care for large household burdens such as cooking and caretaking and are often forced into early marriage. Our annual program offers a direct intervention with a dual aim to keep young girls in the classroom through the academic year while providing clinical support to infirm and elder members of their household through targeted visits and provision of nutritious food packets and medical care.

Why girls drop out of school…and how we keep them enrolled.

Increasing school dropout rates among girls due to poverty is a critical problem facing the Mtogolo community in Malawi. Just like most rural areas, the Mtogolo community--comprising of 50 villages and a population of about 25,000 inhabitants--suffers from high levels of poverty that if not addressed in a systematic manner, would be passed from generation to generation. Within the boundaries of the Mtogolo community, the major causes of poverty stem from families owning inadequate land for food production, predominance of mostly single women heading households, the prevalence of cultural practices that inhibit learning and lead to early marriages, teen pregnancies, domestic servitude, emotional and sexual abuse.

We identify 50 at risk girls ranging from ages 9 through 13 drawn from the participating 50 villages of Traditional Authority, Malemia, Zomba District, Malawi. Decisions for selecting at risk girls is done at zone level by the zone management committee in collaboration with the village membership at zone level. Each of the learning centers will host 7 or 8 at risk girls for a total of 50 girls. The local board reviews the selection procedure and endorses the targeted girls. The selected girls must currently be enrolled in their respective area schools. We provide them with essentials that they need to stay enrolled during this formative period of their education. Your donation goes directly to these items that alleviate the financial burden of their families to care for them.

Why we care for their caretakers…

The centre of our project began with the Gogo Ethel Malemia Clinic, a non- profit entity, which was opened in June 2011 to improve the quality of life for the underserved population, mostly vulnerable elderly and children. Overtime, we evolved our operations to provide home-visits for patients, many of whom are disabled or at an advanced age or stage of HIV and AIDS. The elderly, especially grandmothers, continue to play their roles as parental system of families devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic as has been the case since the outset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the early eighties.

There is an enormous gap in provision of care for elderly citizens in Malawi. With no health support system (government clinics far to reach for the elderly living in rural areas) amidst their deprived economic conditions, most elderly continue to face debilitating health conditions of which they have no ability to cope without adequate support structures. With no external health care support system many have died and continue to die silently in their houses, including the 20 we lost last year. Accordingly, your donation will help address the need to establish long-term support programs aimed at providing structural support for the elderly, including helping them cope with both the ongoing needs to support their families and keep the girls in their families in school. HIV/AIDS continues to be a great risk factor, especially with the severance of USAID supported interventions. These combined factors indicate that there is a greater than ever to help keep the elderly alive and continue to play the vital role they play as caretakers of the sick and the orphaned.

A Breakdown of Our Fundraising Budget

We are applying for a total of $12,345 to support the project’s operations for 1 year beginning January 2026.

1. Medicine for distribution to the elderly and caretakers: MWK500,000.00 per month or ($3,475 per year)

2. Lab assistant to process biomedical laboratory results: MWK100,000 per month ($695 per year)

3. Community outreach programme for home visits 4 times a month for the clinician and nurse, and the community officers: $458 USD or MWK792,000 per month for 12 months ($3,000 per year)

4. Support for girls education to include school supplies, uniforms, shoes, and menstrual products MWK 4,320,075 ($2,500 per school year)

5. Monthly transportation costs for ambulance and staff for outreach to patients and schools: MWK K300,000.00 per month or MWK 3,628,863 per year ($2100 per year)

6. Yearly training of caregivers and volunteers: MWK 1,000,000 ($575 per year)

Our organization has several assets such as dirt motorbikes, a truck, a fully-serviced clinic, which we received in past initiatives. These are key in ensuring that our staff can make home-based visits for patients who are unable to walk to receive adequate health services at our clinic.

Monitoring and Evaluation

A monitoring and evaluation plan will put in place to ensure that initiatives are on track, and therefore effectively achieve the set-out objectives of the project. Monitoring progress will be a continuous process. The key areas of progress will be monitored and will include the financial monitoring to track actual expenditures against planned costs. Evaluation will be a key management tool which will inform all project stakeholders about the effectiveness of the project and make necessary adjustments to improve or change aspects of the program. Evaluations will specifically focus on implementation performance; achievement of project outputs, objectives and goals and assessment of financial and economic costs and benefits.

About Children’s Hope Malawi…

Children’s Hope Malawi Inc. is a non-profit organization that holds a 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt status in the United States. In Malawi, we are registered with the NGO Board and the Medical Council of Malawi. Since 2011, its core areas of operation are education and healthcare. Its first programs in the education sector included early childhood development, and after school homework help programs. In 2020, the programmes evolved significantly to meet changing needs to support education programs for girls in government schools in order to address the causes of high drop-out rates amongst girls in the community. In the health sector, the project operates a clinic 5 days a week offering basic outpatient services including palliative care for the elderly and HIV/AIDS patients. Our goal is to help keep the elderly healthy as they play an active role in the care system of families devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Children’s Hope supports and partners with other development agencies and district government officials in the area to avoid duplication of efforts.

Visit us at www.childrenshopemalawi.com