New Year, new beginnings! It is no longer a holiday to some of our girls we supported in secondary school through scholarships but rather a new beginning to a new life. They sat for their Form 4 examinations and are now at home helping parents with household work as they plan the next chapter in their lives.Last Wednesday afternoon as showers of rain drops were all over Kasungu, I started off for Makanda village to have a chat with some of the girls JMV supported...
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What a great year we had here at Join My Village!  Thanks to your support and engagement, we were able to unlock $900,000 for CARE programs in Malawi four weeks early.  What a great testament to the power of online actions to help us enact change!We made great strides in 2011.  We welcomed Merck as a new partner which helped us release even more funds.  We saw the number of secondary school scholarships nearly double – increasing from 161 in Year 1 to 241 in...
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In late September Dr. Wangari Maathai founder of the Green belt Movement in Kenya died of cancer.  Dr. Maathai was an activist, leader, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.  She was a woman who knew and taught the importance of protecting the natural environment, and of educating and empowering all members of our communities.  Her passing was a major loss to people all over the world.  It was a particular loss to the women of Africa, who considered her ours in a special way, and her achievements a reflection of who we can...
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Join My Village is changing lives in the villages we work with in so many ways, and sometimes in ways that even surprise us. Tisungane Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) is one example of some exciting changes in JMV communities that we didn’t plan for. Tisungane is an unusual VSLA because it is comprised of 25 men, when most VSLAs are exclusively women, and it represents some fundamental shifts in attitudes amongst men in the communities and improved relationships between women and men.    ...
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Join My Village gave them reference materials in primary school and now it’s their time for a new beginning in their life and a new generation of scholarship girls.     When JMV supplied the reference materials to 15 rural primary schools in the district of Kasungu in central Malawi, little did the school girls know that one day they will benefit from a Join My Village scholarship as well. The 300 reference materials that Join My Village has provided to date have benefited more than...
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