By Deepa Pullanikkatil | Co-Founder Abundance
Dear Supporters,
Hope you are all well and safe during this time. It is not easy to lead an organization during these difficult times of COVID-19. We had slowed down our field activities particularly the trainings at eLearning center.
Perhaps you may have followed on the news that Malawi did not carryout a lockdown and there are 620 confirmed cases and 8 deaths in the country, with 91 recovered cases as of today. At Mbando village, there was one confirmed case of COVID of a young man who returned from South Africa. He was quarantined at home for two weeks and is now fine. The District Health Office visited Mbando village to brief the community about taking precautions. Another sad news was the demise of the wife of our late Chief Mbando. We pray for strength for the Chief's family, who are now left with three daughters and five sons; two of the sons are in South Africa, while the rest are in Malawi.
These are difficult times, however, we have realised that it is now time to continue our projects with precautions, as we navigate this new way of working under COVID-19.We had been in discussions with our technology partner ShiftIT and as advised by them, we hope to restart trainings at the eLearning center soon with safe distancing. Carl of ShiftIT suggests training the teachers of the secondary and primary schools, so that they can carry out the trainings to the children, rather than having an external trainer going to the village regularly. This could be a good option to reduce travelling by outsiders to the village and also sustainable in the long run.
ShiftIT has identified a trainer -Francis (photo attached), who works as a Physics and Computer Studies teacher under the Ministry of Education. He is currently stationed at St.Michael's Girls Secondary School in Mangochi. We are in discussions with the eLearning commitee to plan a date for Francis to come to Mbando village and train the teachers. Schools are likely to open next week, so this is an opportune time to start trainings. We will use part of the elearning budget to buy soap for handwashing during the trainings. Wish us well as we try to continue our work in the times of COVID-19, and as always very many thanks for supporting us.
Stay safe! Stay well!
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