• Education for children and teenagers in Malawi
• Construction of a Teacher Training College in Mzambazi (Theodora van Rossum TTC)
• Construction and support of more than 40 schools, training for 450 fully qualified teachers, and a School Meals Program for 20.000 thousand children!
• Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture and Agroforestry in most of our School Gardens, with different types of self produced fertilizer.
  
• Promotion of Sustainable Construction with Rammed Earth, Green Concrete and other sustainable approaches, especially for standardized buildings in the education or social sector.

Chancen durch Bildung e.V. (“Opportunities through Education”) is a German NGO based in Munich. Founded in 1988, we have built or assisted in building more than 40 schools, supported dozens of students with scholarships, and the training of assistant teachers, besides other projects. The english page can only provide a first impression of the projects. For details please have a look at the german pages, or get in touch with us.
Besides classical aid projects, in future we want to focus on the reduction of the CO2-footprint of our buildings by using local construction techniques combined with findings of scientific approaches – concrete from plant ashes, rammed earth, e.g.. In addition, urban planning aspects should be taken into account, the construction of marketplaces, commercial or industrial yards be considered, together with approaches that allow and support the expected rapid growth of cities in Malawi.

LATEST NEWS:

• Malokotera Secondary School opened up in September!
• CDB ‘s Teacher Training Center in Mzambazi, Mzimba District, Northern Malawi celebrates second group of students finishing exams in September – thus having trained 450 teachers overall since 2017, of which half were scholarship students!
  
• CdB Food Program in Mzimba (and Nkhata Bay) District with currently 50 Schools, further expansion planned.
  
• Salima Secondary School Scholarships participants start vocational training.

New Agroforest project in 2024

This year, we will be launching a major new project aimed at protecting the forests – partly as agroforests – and groundwater in the new project region, which would also prevent erosion and flash floods.
Designed as a highly integrated project south of the Vwaza Wildlife Sanctuary, it will include a three-stage forest protection concept, but will also work a lot with the communities there to enable them to tackle their own projects in the future without support from us. The project is flanked by investments in infrastructure, i.e. local schools and health facilities, amongst others. The introduction and conversion to sustainable agricultural techniques is just as important to us as the expansion of our school feeding program, which will then include around 70 schools – most of which are already highly independent. An important element will be the two multifunctional community centers, which will offer adult education on sustainability, digital and traditional libraries and health services, etc. Through the networking of development committees, a supra-regional exchange of knowledge on all relevant topics is to be initiated, from sustainable agriculture to business start-ups, food storage to healthy nutrition, etc.

Malokotera Secondary School:

Finally, the time has come: our first secondary school – in Malokotera, about 50 km north of Mzuzu – has opened! Almost all the buildings are already standing or nearing completion.
For the students of our project area this is an enormous relief, because until now they lived on average 22 km away from the next school, which made school attendance for most of them arduous to impossible. Now they have a normal, acceptable way to school. The atmosphere at the school is very relaxed, and we hope that it will stay that way when the two hostels go into operation next year, which alone can accommodate about 120 young people.

Picture of our new secondary school: on the left the school blocks, in the middle the admin block, on the right the teachers’ houses, in between kitchen/ dining area). Only the two hostels and a laboratory block are still to be built.

There is still a shortage of several hundred secondary schools in the country, which is why we assume that the capacity limit of 400 places in the morning alone will soon be reached. It is quite conceivable that afternoon classes will then also be established. But first and foremost, the two hostels still have to be built.

Theodora van Rossum TTC:
In December 2019 we received the financial approval of our to date biggest project, a new Teacher Training Center in Mzambazi, Northern Malawi. Based on some existing buildings close to the Mzambazi Health Center, we have constructed a new central building and two hostels, as well as supporting facilities, which have allowed us the first intake of 140 students in March, and already the second of other 120 in October 2021. This was a quite ambitious goal, but we never lost our optimism.

Our first group of CdB Scholarship beneficiaries, in front of the new central building of the Theodora van Rossum Teacher Training College!

Up to 42 students will have the opportunity to have a 2/3 scholarship, aiming at students from families from the countryside – poor families without other professional income. These scholarships should improve income stratification, strengthen the ties between teacher and their original school, and lead to a higher resilience of families and communities against bad harvests due to climate change.

Scholarship Programs
CdB operates three kinds of Scholarship programs, one for professional training at Universities or Colleges, the Teacher Training program, and a program for Secondary Schools in the Salima region. As it is relatively new, we herewith introduce the Salima project.

Salima Secondary School Project
Access to secondary and especially tertiary education is still not easy in Malawi. After completing elementary school, this path remains closed for many young people due to a lack of financial resources.
Two former volunteers became aware of this during their learning service at a rural elementary school in Salima (central region), and in 2018 they developed the Salima School Sponsoring Project together with a Malawian primary school teacher.

The Salima School Sponsoring Project aims to enable the continuation of schooling and vocational training after the completion of elementary school. Participants in the project are motivated young Malawian people from the Salima region who have performed very well in elementary school, but whose families are unable to finance further education from their own resources. Currently, 4 girls and 2 boys are attending a secondary school in the Salima area and one student is attending the Salima Technical College. With the project joining the association “Chancen durch Bildung eV.” in 2022, the three women hope to be able to accept more scholarship holders soon.
The funding includes school fees, rent for accommodation near the schools, as well as covering the cost of school materials and uniforms. At the moment, we enter the next step for some of the participants, as two students have started a vocational training as tailors in Lilongwe.

In Malawi, primary school teacher Patricia Tembo is responsible for the project and is the contact person for the students. In Germany, students Henrike Schröder and Elena Ziegler Ruiz are responsible for donations and for the organization of the scholarships.

If you are interested in helping this project to grow, you are welcome to donate to Chancen durch Bildung e.V.! The cost for one year of secondary school at the moment (August 2022) is 101 €. Donations of any amount, however, are greatly appreciated!

Covid-19 Mitigation project:
With an initial number of 100 Volunteer Teachers, we have made a training and distributed them to our 50 SMP schools, to offer additional lessons for learners prone to drop out, or having dropped out already, to compensate some of the negative effects linked to the long school closures of 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Or course in schools with a severe lack of teachers, they work as stand-ins in the morning hours, but still they will have a positive effect on school success. After the recent consolidation, we want to make sure that – where possible – indeed afternoon classes and adult literacy courses are offered for the remaining year of training.
With our partners from the TTC, we managed to integrate the Volunteers into a full Teacher Training, allowing them to get a Teacher Certificate in December 2024.

Other Projects
Aside of the projects mentioned above, we currently prepare several new construction projects, of which of course not all will really substantiate:
– Some new School Blocks, Teachers Houses and Kitchen Storage facilities, of which some will be a Rammed Earth prototypes.
– in 2024 an agroforestry program with ground water and natural resources management and a strong biodiversity component close to Vwaza Marsh National Park

Jour Fixe and Annual Meeting
Our Jour Fixe is held at the second Tuesday of the month, mostly in the “Weltwirtschaft”, Eine Welt-Haus, Schwanthaler Str. 80, close to the Underground stop “Theresienwiese”. Start time is 19:30. Due to Covid-19 we have switched to Online meetings for the time being.

Dontations
To continue our construction works and Food Programs at the mentioned schools and others, your donation and support would help us a lot – to give children in Malawi a solid school education and a better future!

Donations Account Chancen durch Bildung e.V.
IBAN DE96 7015 0000 0021 2469 70
BIC SSKMDEMM

If you need a receipt, click here.

For each donation CHANCEN DURCH BILDUNG e.V. declares the obligation, to use it effectively and responsibly in our projects.

For more information please send an email to .
Or call: 0049-89 – 2621 4015.