Recently, D2D’s junior and senior primary school girls club had a netball game against another team of young girls from a neighboring village.

We have missed hosting volunteers over the last 18 months. Luckily, we were able to connect with Visa’s Southern Africa office who reached out wanting to volunteer with D2D youth.

D2D continually hosts interns from various institutions throughout the year, recognizing the mutual advantages of internship programs. Our interns to date have enhanced the operations of our office, bringing new practices and fresh ideas to the table.

Recently, the committee members and a few D2D staff were able to visit SOS Children Village in Mzuzu, a program very similar to ours in Chilumba. We were able to tour their facilities and learn about their policies. It was a great experience to see other programs doing similar work and share ideas on best practices.

Each year, Determined to Develop prepares tree seedlings to be shared within the surrounding communities at the start of rainy season. This year we managed to produce 2000 trees that were to be distributed to our local Primary schools, Community Day secondary Schools and to community members.

Nursery school is an important stepping stone in a child’s path to success. Determined to Develop continues to be involved with the running of four local nursery schools. The D2D staff recently hosted a training workshop for nursery school teachers. During the workshop, teachers learned strategies for effective lesson planning and recognizing different developmental stages in a child’s life.

January 15th marks the annual “John Chilembwe Day” in Malawi. John Chilembwe (1871 – 3 February 1915) was a Baptist pastor, educator, and missionary who is commemorated today as Malawi’s earliest independence movement hero.

During this extra-long holiday, we have really missed being at school but we are benefitting from tutoring at D2D. We thought it would be so difficult for us to proceed with our studies but during this holiday, D2D staff has supported us by organizing lessons so that we can keep studying.