How We Work To Remove Barriers of Education – Volume 2, Episode 5: EKARI Foundation
The next episode of our monthly Circle of Sisterhood vlog series is here! This month’s episode features the EKARI Foundation located in Malawi, Africa. CofS has been able to support the education of Malawian girls and women through several grants starting back in 2012.
Tune in to this month’s episode to learn more about the impact CofS has been able to make by supporting the work of the EKARI Foundation throughout the years.
About EKARI Foundation
EKARI Foundation educates Malawians toward self-dependency through youth education, adult literacy, and community economic development. EKARI Foundation empowers the future generations of Malawi to emerge from poverty through their efforts by providing access to quality and relevant education, coupled with the necessary educational resources and training to assist communities in establishing and celebrating sustainable livelihoods. Our first grant in 2012 ($3,500) provided six girls in Malawi with tuition, boarding fees, meal program, uniforms, transport home during holidays, basic necessities such as soap, feminine products, notebooks, and an allowance for school needs/supplies.
We renewed our support of EKARI in 2013 via a second grant ($4,500) supporting one year of school for seven girls, including the six girls we funded through for the 2012-13 school year.
EKARI received a third grant ($5,000) in 2014 to fund six girls for one year of secondary school. (Five of the six girls were students we already supported.) Additionally, our 2014 grant funds supported the Adult Literacy Program, a new initiative EKARI started to tackle illiteracy, which some have called the greatest challenge to conducting sustainable and empowering development work.
Our fourth grant to EKARI ($5,000), awarded in October 2015, funded one year of secondary school for six girls plus additional support via EKARI’s tutoring program. We sponsored the five students that were supported by the Circle of Sisterhood during the 2014-15 school year and one additional student who will take the place of a CofS sponsored student who left the program. Our support of EKARI’s tutoring program will provide these girls with 150 hours of small group tutoring, where they will be able to ask questions they are too shy to ask in class and receive 1-on-1 attention they will never receive from their classroom teachers.
Our fifth grant to EKARI ($9,665), awarded in November 2016, will continue the sponsorship of the six students the Circle of Sisterhood has supported during the 2015-16 school year as well as fund two new students. Our grant will also partially fund an Agro/Vet Project, part of EKARI’s new Sustainable Livelihoods Program that involves partnering with the local government to form and provide Village Savings and Loan co-ops with financial literacy, business management, agricultural, and vocational training.