Impact Report
For this purpose, I will call our project ‘R World’s library in north-east Malawi’. R World is a small charity focusing on development projects in a village in north east Malawi called Chitimba, and honours the life of my son Robbie Curtis who has inspired everything we do. Robbie was a big reader and was destined to work in Africa. Sadly he passed away in 2020. After, R World was created and so we could continue his journey, we were put in touch with the BMF by another small charity and the R World/BMF partnership blossomed. We formed a plan – to build a library – as in this part of the world, there was no library within a 4 hour drive. The library will cater for adults and children and this was recently declared open.
In the video we have prepared, it is obvious how delighted the Malawians are with this new facility and the books and computers we have sent via Books2Africa. We continue to raise money to fill the library with books and computers and to buy furniture and other fixtures.
Of course the library has been created from scratch as there were no libraries within a 4 hour drive. As far as I know, there were very few books at all in this area.
We have sent over 2000 books and 6 computers. The books were great and the children are really enjoying reading and looking at them. I think most of the computers are in good working order.
The impact has been huge in this area of Malawi which previously had no library within a 4 hour drive. A radio journalist has said that it is set to revive the dying literacy levels in this part of the world and education chiefs have asked Brown if he can educate those children currently out of school. Other local schools pay regular visits to the library as currently they have mainly children’s books. Apparently adults have visited and Brown from the BMF has told them that they will be receiving adult books soon.
You can see from the video R World has prepared of the opening ceremony that the community is delighted with their new library and I know that some of the children who currently haven’t got funding for secondary school are studying in there most days. It is piquing the ambition of these children and the impact is growing all the time.
Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nMq6zEYtdk