The Chesney Trust for Education in Malawi is a charity registered in Scotland (SC 037540) in October 2006 and a registered International Non-Governmental Organisation in Malawi. The Trust was founded by Janet Chesney after a two-year voluntary teaching placement in Nkhamenya, Malawi on the Scottish Churches World Exchange programme. 

This experience inspired the foundation of the Trust, whose objects are:

(a) to advance the education of girls in Northern Malawi, by means of funding a project to build a girls’ secondary school (to be called the Edinburgh Girls’ High School) in Engcongolweni, in Mzimba District, and provide bursaries annually for five children with hearing impairment, and for five orphans;

(b) to improve the infrastructure (roads, water, electricity, employment opportunities) and health facilities of the surrounding area for the benefit of the local community.

Information on the achievements of the first year and the plans for the school are given in the Annual Report and Financial Statement and Project Plan, which can be found at http://www.chesneytrust.org/news.  The work of Janet Chesney and The Chesney Trust received very favourable comment from MSP’s Karen Gillon and Aileen Campbell in the debate on Malawi in the Scottish Parliament in February 2008.

Plans for the next six months in Malawi include:

·         Completion by end-May 2008 of the construction of a permanent bridge for access to the site, which will be a great benefit to the community.

·         Exploration for a suitable site for the borehole.  Surveys undertaken last year unfortunately did not produce sufficient water.  Further surveys will be undertaken with drilling to greater depths and we expect that these will be successful.

Pump Aid tackles poverty by working with local communities to establish sustainable supplies of clean water for improved health and increased agricultural production

To break the cycle of poverty in Africa, access to clean water for drinking and water for irrigation must be improved. Pump Aid builds appropriate technology water pumps, called Elephant Pumps that can be maintained by poor rural communities without any outside assistance.

These pumps provide clean drinking water and can also be used to sustain crops during the dry season or through periods when rains fail, as they have done this year.