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Health & Fitness

Educating Orphans in Malawi

Epicenter Solutions, a non-profit charitable outreach of Calvary Chapel, Southbury, is using many approaches to try and break a cycle of poverty In Malawi.

In Malawi, a country in sub-Saharan Africa, only elementary school is available for children free of charge.  Once they reach middle school, any further schooling costs money, leaving education out of reach for the 1.5 million orphans there, keeping them stuck in a cycle of abject poverty.  Epicenter Solutions, a non-profit charitable outreach of Calvary Chapel Southbury, is using many approaches to try and break this cycle - one of the ways is by paying school tuition and providing supplies and uniforms for as many orphans registered in their Feeding Centers as they can.  Adirondack Christian Fellowship in New York has partnered with them on this and is making significant contributions to this cause. 

On Epicenter's recent mission trip to Malawi, the team interviewed four of the orphans that they are paying school fees for.  National pastor Stanley Mateya found these children in rural villages and brought them to the feeding center to receive meals and education.  A boy named Shem told them that he would like to be a teacher one day.  Abraham said he wanted to study agriculture management.  Nora would like to be a policewoman and Emmanuel Thomas hopes to be a doctor, so he can return to the Calvary Feeding Center and help his “brothers and sisters” there.  These children have grown up in this feeding center that is supported by Epicenter Solutions.

There is only one way that these orphaned children will have any of these opportunities – to be able to finish Form 4 (their high school) and continue on to college.  Currently, Epicenter is providing Form 4 tuition for thirteen children like these.  Their hope and prayer is to be able to begin sending some children to college as well. 

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Educating these children makes them assets to their communities, so they are no longer seen as burdens.  Many of them express the desire to return to their villages with the skills they learn in school and put them to use improving their communities.

To find out more information, please visit Epicenter's website at www.epicentersolutions.org or to view videos taken on the recent mission trip, visit www.youtube/user/epicentersolutions/videos.

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