Friday 12 August 2016

April to June 2016 Newsletter

Nursery Kitchen
Nursery

It is already 1 year now, since this blog has been started in July 2015.
Many projects have been started, continued and even finished during that time,
especially in the last few months.

A completely new nursery building has been planned and constructed in just a year's time thanks to generous donations from several individuals through FOMOE.
It will provide a safe, friendly and joyful environment to the youngest ones at MOET as soon as it opens when the next term starts in September!

Although the nursery with all its beautiful children-friendly drawings on the walls, its beds for tired children and its colourful plastic chairs was just finished, the next nursery-related project has already been started: The construction of a nursery kitchen will be essential for MOET's vision of having a completely separated and self-contained nursery. The idea is that the youngsters will stay inside the fences of the nursery and its playground all the time, so that they don't have to mix up with the much bigger and maybe intimidating primary students to have their daily meal.

Thanks to a grant from the Marine Institute of Canada, the construction of the kitchen has already begun, but due to a lack of further funding, the construction had to stop slightly below the window level. Therefore, MOET would like to ask its friends for further support to finish this great project.
The costs to finish this project are estimated to be 1000 £. 


The kitchen as of now


The Head Teacher's Office

The second project, which has been finished in a record time recently, was the construction of an office for MOET's headteacher! It was built as an extension on the left side of the old nursery, which will subsequently be used as a new staff room. Both of them will be a relief for the chronically congested main office and will allow the teachers to do their work more efficiently and professionally. We would like to express our gratitude once more to our donors, in this case the "United Methodist Church" from Atlanta, USA, who made this achievement possible for us!


New headteacher's office




Irrigation Scheme

Whilst the worrying dry spell in Malawi did not improve with the end of this year's rainy season, and most of Malawi's landscape is already bleak and stark, MOET's gardens are as green as ever!


The garden


A lot of maize
This is mainly achieved through an elaborate irrigation scheme using the abundance of water from the nearby lake. The main purpose of our garden is to grow vegetables and maize to feed the children and as well to create income for the school through sales. Unfortunately, the irrigation scheme was planned for a much smaller demand of around 200 kids, and now that there are more than 350 children here, demand is outstripping supply. For that reason, MOET
is looking for funds to extend its irrigation scheme and to connect the student's garden to the main irrigation scheme.
Apart from that, all kinds of donations, even if it is just a pack of seeds are always highly appreciated!


Standard 8 Party

One of the main events during the third term was, as it is every year, the graduation of the Standard 8 learners after 3 months of intense studying and a week full of examinations. All the learners and their families as well as the teachers were invited to a great party with good food, some drinks, and many encouraging speeches! As a venue, the Ziboliboli Beach Resort right on the shores of Lake Malawi was chosen again, and allowed the students a diversion after boarding at MOET for about 3 months. After the food was served and the speeches were delivered, the students, their families, the teachers and, of course, the director danced together to Malawian and international songs - an amazing experience! Following the end of the students' party, all the teachers and some of the support staff stayed at the place and enjoyed themselves with even more dancing. MOET is already looking forward to the
graduation of the current Standard 7 students next year!



Patterson's speech

Lunch
Gift-giving ceremony

Dancing!


Standard 8 Results

As MOET always prides itself with the above-average results of their Standard 8 leavers, we also want to wish this years' graduates good luck for the release
of their final results in September.

The last years' results

Laptops

We would like to close this blog with an urgent request: Thanks to MOET's secondary school sponsorship programme, we have been able or are intending to send some of our now grown-up students to college! Most of them are going to the "Technical College Salima", where they are expected to have Laptops to work with. Unfortunately, it exceeds MOET's financial ability to provide all of the college students with computers, so we would like to ask anyone for old, used laptops they don't need anymore. Even if you think, that it might be too old/used/scratched, they can still be of great use for MOET and its students.