Announcement of Floods Recovery Grants

30 June 2015

The Beit Trust and the Scotland Malawi Partnership have donated £20,000 to support flood recovery and rehabilitation in Malawi, with full details announced today.

The Beit Trust and the Scotland Malawi Partnership have donated £20,000 to support flood recovery and rehabilitation in Malawi, with full details announced today.

In May 2015 the Trustees of the Beit Trust generously donated £20,000 to the Scotland Malawi Partnership to assist with community recovery, rehabilitation and preparedness work after the January floods in Malawi. In turn, the Scotland Malawi Partnership (SMP) and our partners in Malawi, the Malawi Scotland Partnership (MaSP), approached our members and partners in Malawi inviting communities affected by the floods to apply for 'micro grants' of between £1,000 and £3,000.

The SMP in turn dispersed these funds in a timely, effective and transparent manner; ensuring projects that offer the greatest impact were supported and that all projects work within agreed Scotland-Malawi 'Partnership Principles'. The Scotland Malawi Partnership did so making no charge, ensuring every penny went directly to the communities in Malawi affected by the floods. All costs and bank charges were accepted by the SMP.

The SMP's model as a network celebrates people-to-people and community-to-community links driven by friendship, mutual understanding and volunteerism. This bottom-up approach offers considerable impact with even relatively modest quantities of financial support. Accordingly, we have distributed these funds to a number of community-level projects that are already working together between Scotland and Malawi in this area.

In total eight community-to-community projects have been funded. It is estimated that more than 10,000 people in Malawi will directly benefit from these nine micro-grants and over 40,000 will indirectly benefit.

This work will include:
- rebuilding a community bridge that was destroyed in the Goliyo area near Blantyre;
- rebuilding six houses destroyed in the floods in Likhubula, Mulanje;
- improving food security in Malawi's last leprosy community (Utale and Utale 2) through winter cropping and a community food bank;
- repairing teachers' houses, reinstating classrooms, fixing school roofs, and repairing damaged school toilets in Njale;
- training communities on new flood resilient 'earth-bag' houses and build ten new homes
- training local communities how to build more flood-resistant homes, and then work together to re-build 8 houses using these techniques
- supporting food security for 700 households in Chiradzulu
- restocking the health centre with essential medication and equipment lost in the flood.

In keeping with our commitment to full transparency, full details about the application and selection process and information about how every penny will be spent in Malawi, is available online at. CLICK HERE to read.

Maj-General Angus Ramsay CBE DSO, Secretary to the Beit Trustees, said:
"The Beit Trustees were saddened that seasonal flooding did so much damage this year to one of their favourite countries. They hope that their restoration grant, rapidly and wisely deployed through the good offices of the Scottish Malawi Partnership, may bring more warmth and cheer back to many of the southern inhabitants of the Warm Heart of Africa"

David Hope-Jones, Scotland Malawi Partnership Principal Officer said:
"We are delighted to have helped facilitate this donation to support flood recovery and rehabilitation work in Malawi. By working through pre-existing community-to-community links with Malawi we can offer astonishing impact with even relatively modest funds. It is estimated more than 10,000 Malawians will benefit from these funds, through projects re-building houses and bridges, supporting food security, replacing lost drugs and medicines, and helping communities increase local resilience. All of this is done through partnership - dignified, two-way partnerships."

Those applicants that were not successful but were eligible are now being promoted by the Scotland Malawi Partnership with the hope of finding further donors who could support this work. Already:
• The 'Girls Go for Health' group at Coatbridge High School has pledged to fund all of the livelihoods project in Mulanje, and
• Kilmaron Special School and the Additional Support Needs Department at Bell Baxter Cluster have kindly pledged to raise £850-£1,000 help construct modern disaster-resistant houses for those with disabilities and their guardians in Nsanje.

IF YOU COULD HELP SUPPORT ONE OF THE REMAINING PROJECTS PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS.

View of flooding TM