Anjimile was raised and educated in Malawi. As a young woman she taught high school, worked in the Ministry of Education, and held a position as national women’s coordinator. From there she went on to receive a Masters Degree in Education from The George Washington University. And for her doctoral studies, she focused on the attitude of Malawian parents towards their girls’ educations.

Her resume also includes stints at the World Bank Regional Training Programme and the International Monetary Fund, and a sabbatical at the Harvard Business School. WIth her inspiring story and unique skill set, we at Raising Malawi believe she is the perfect candidate to head the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

Introduction

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Progress at the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls

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Questions from You, Raising Malawi's Supporters

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The Entire Recording

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Get Involved

Inspired by what you just heard? Now's the time to act. Take the following actions to be a part of Raising Malawi's efforts to empower Malawi's young women.

• Learn more about Anji: read a recent blog post about Anjimile Oponyo.
• Signup for updates: be the first to know when things happen at the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls site.
• Support the Academy: support the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls with monthly donations—it all adds up, no matter how small the contribution.

However, these programs often fail to reach sex workers, a high-risk population that must be engaged if we are to have any hope of containing the spread of the virus. This is problematic in countries mired in poverty and instability, where a sizable number of defenseless girls and women can become trapped in this nefarious trade, often against their wills.

Empowering Women to Leave the Sex Trade

To address this gap in fighting HIV/AIDS, Raising Malawi joined Partners In Health (PIH), whose founders include Paul Farmer, in supporting a Women's Empowerment Group at Zalewa, a trading center built on a heavily traveled stretch of road connecting Lilongwe and Blantyre, two of Malawi's major cities.

The program at Zalewa offers commercial sex worker the resources necessary to transition into safer lines of work, in addition to much-needed medical testing and treatment. The health programs available to women include: family planning visits, cervical cancer screening and treatment, syphilis testing, HIV testing, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment. Additionally, women can obtain vocational training; work at Mtendere, an onsite restaurant co-op run by former sex workers; or take English courses.

Zalewa employees and volunteers have been sending Raising Malawi quarterly reports since we began supporting their work. The news has been encouraging—progress that we would qualify as a success.

Success of the Women's Empowerment Group at Zalewa

The developments over the past two quarters include:

• Contacts on the ground call the restaurant a great success, generating upwards of $1,300 a month.
• Because revenue has been so good, the restaurant workers decided to invest 20% of the profits back into the empowerment program and are considering expanding.
• There were 417 to the family planning clinic, an encouraging turnout.
• Women continue using screening programs and seeking out treatment when needed.
• The empowerment center has started an agricultural training program, planting soybeans and other crops.

In addition to this work, Partners In Health and the Women's Empowerment Group continue to work with the Social Welfare Department to get the group recognized as a Community Based Organization. Recognition will increase cooperation between PIH and the group.

Read this inspiring story about Zalewa on the Partners In Health site.

My birthday this week was such a blessing for me. I was surrounded by dear friends, my loving family, and by you.

The notes I received from the Raising Malawi family were simply beautiful—both in their kindness and their concern for the children of Malawi. Thank you for making my birthday so special.

The note from Sylvia in Great Britain is a message for all of us:

May Malawi, and its beautiful people, be raised through the generosity of those who share your dreams. Thank you for the work you do and the joy you give to your fans worldwide. We are all better people for being connected.

I love how Sylvia echoed the African philosophy ubuntu—I am because we are. We do share a common fate. And we must continue to dream of a better future.

That’s why it’s so important that we stay connected with each other. I hope you will help us raise awareness about Malawi by joining our Facebook community:

http://www.facebook.com/RaisingMalawi

Along with the birthday wishes, many of you took the opportunity to make a donation to our work in Malawi. Again, thank you all!

From Alvaro in Mexico City to Esther in Istanbul, your generous donations totaling over $18,000 touched my heart and will change the lives of so many children. I truly cannot think of a better birthday gift.

Thank you again for being a part of this community and the work most dear to my heart.

Gratefully yours,

Madonna

P.S. If you would like to donate to Raising Malawi today, I will match your donation—doubling its impact on the lives of the Malawi children.

In a belated post, Raising Malawi would like to congratulate studio MDA — Markus and his entire staff — on receiving recognition for their work on the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls in an exhibit at the prestigious Architecture Forum Aedes in Berlin.

The exhibition, "Measure of Man — Measure of Architecture: New Responsibilities in Architecture and Urbanism," will be on display through September 23 and is an honor to everyone involved with this innovative project.

From Aedes announcement:

A defining characteristic of these architecture and urbanism projects is their intention to function as instigators of social, infrastructural or economic change, over and above functioning as an aesthetic object.

[...]

At their best, these projects do not import principles and typologies from elsewhere, but rather develop insightful solutions that are grounded as much in observation and knowledge of local situations as they are in the specialist training and professional expertise of their instigators.

These words embody the driving force and vision behind the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. We congratulate studio MDA on this much-deserved honor.

To move construction of the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls forward, consider making a donation.

The teachers from the Melete Foundation have posted photographs of their trip on Flickr (view them here). If you have not already, you should take the time to go through this amazing collection of images. It is truly heartwarming — very inspiring snapshots of their work with deserving children.

The teachers traveled to Malawi as part of the Melete Foundation's International Teacher Program. The program was a collaboration between the Melete Foundation and Raising Malawi.

You can read our first post about the program here.

Listen to an 11-minute excerpt from their conversation here. In it, Philippe and Jon discuss the benefit of donating assets to a charitable organization like Raising Malawi.

Click to download.

Enjoy the full conversation here (give it time to load).

Click to download.

Jon Biondo is a New York attorney specializing in wills, trusts and estate planning. With office locations in the 5 boroughs of New York City, Long Island, and Dutchess County, Jon has served more than 2000 clients in 14 years of private practice. Jon is a graduate of Tufts University and Fordham Law School.

As an active supporter of Raising Malawi, Jon co-founded “Youth of Malawi”, a psycho-social support organization for orphans. In April, 2010, the organization took 300 children from the Home of Hope Orphanage on a beach trip to the shores of Lake Malawi. Jon also lends his Fire Island Home each year to Broadway Cares, which hosts the “Fire Island Dance Festival”, a New York Times Covered Cultural Event which raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for the fight against HIV and AIDS.

To learn more about donating your assets to Raising Malawi, read the following post.

Today is Madonna's birthday. Her dedication to the 2 million orphaned and vulnerable children of Malawi has inspired so many of us. So this year, for her birthday, we wanted to honor her by saying, "Thank you."
Join Raising Malawi in sharing a birthday message with Madonna now.

Send your message here.

The three fellows, all American teachers, are getting a first-hand look at the serious challenges facing Malawi's educational system. While in Malawi, the teachers are using a journal to record their thoughts, observations and experiences.

Fellow Zakiyyah Ali is a community organizer and history teacher at the High School for Global Citizenship in Brooklyn, New York. Working with students and teachers in Malawi fits perfectly into Zakiyyah's global philosophy: we all have so much to learn from the world that surrounds us.

Check out Zakiyyah's journal entry from August 2:

For the past two days, July 29th and July 30th, I have visited with the teachers of the Millennium Village in Gumulira. This is a primary educational facility, schooling students from Standards 1 to 8 (in the American system this would Kindergarten to 8th grade)... the teachers travel exorbitant distances to reach the school by 7:30 AM, usually by local bike riders. There is no government transport system to provide for its teachers. The pay is very little and the teachers are extremely overworked. During the regular school year, the class size can be as large as 75 students or more! With this increase in the amount of students, there is still only one teacher, very few, if any resources, and yet the expectation remains the same — to educate. While there are teachers who are able to demonstrate minimally good methodological practices to engage a particular class, school-wide there is not the demonstration of best practices.

To read all of the journal entries from Melete fellows Ian, Jebediah and Zakiyyah, click here.

Find out how you can get involved and help raise Malawi here.

What was the situation like at the start of the project in Gumulira?

The project was launched in September 2006 to address a major challenge of food insecurity caused by limited access to improved hybrid maize seed and inorganic fertilizers. Maize production was as low as 1.2 to 1.5 metric tons or less. As such, food insecurity was prevalent during some months of the year. The project area also faced a challenge of limited and difficult access to medical services, with the nearest health facility being over 10 kilometers away. Access to clean water was also a prevailing situation, with a majority of the people using unsafe water drawn from shallow and open wells, predisposing the people to various water-borne diseases. There was a poor learning environment for primary school pupils, with inadequate or no classrooms (learning under a tree and borrowed church facilities) in one of the schools in Gumulira. Deforestation due to tobacco production and other environmental mismanagement practices continues to threaten Gumulira, making it vulnerable to devastating climatic changes. There is no electricity in Gumulira, neither is there a piped water system.

How has the village benefited directly from the project / Raising Malawi support?

Gumulira has implemented a number of development interventions to close some of the development gaps described above. For example, there has been the provision of hybrid maize seed and inorganic fertilizers, thereby realizing increased production of maize from an average of between 1.2–1.5 metric tons per hectare to 4.27–5.6 metric tons per hectare. This has created a food surplus situation and, the surplus production has been used as a source of income and contributing to the school feeding program in the project, currently reaching up to 1,864 pupils. The project also benefited from the distribution of 700 female and 30 males goats on a “pass-on scheme,” and just over 130 goats have been passed on to secondary beneficiaries.

Although the project has had no physical structure in the form of a health facility, access to health services has been significantly improved by conducting integrated outreach clinics twice per week and a school health intervention. Over 6,000 people have been treated over the past four years and distance to access health services has been reduced from 10km (over six miles) to about 2km (just over one mile). The project drilled six new boreholes and repaired 16 non-functional ones and, therefore, providing clean water to over 5,000 people. Community members were trained on maintenance of the water points to ensure continuous availability of potable water.

Gumulira has also benefited from the construction of a new school with four classrooms. As a result, the government upgraded the school from standard 2 to standard 4. Gumulira has also benefited from improved communication through the erection of a tower by Zain Malawi under Millennium Promise partnership with Ericsson.

What is the most memorable story coming from the village?

One of the memorable stories is that community members in Gumulira harvested more maize per unit area than the national average production. Therefore, households have had adequate food over the past four years and were able contribute two bags of maize (100kg) for the school meals program and the surplus was used to purchase a US$17,000.00 truck to support the construction of the community center in Gumulira. The truck is being used as a business venture for the Gumulira community and is also used to ferry various materials including bricks, sand, quarry, stone, cement and irons sheets for community projects. Another story concerns the improved access to medical services saw the reduction in travel distance from 10 km to a maximum 2km through the introduction integrated outreach health services. This has provided easy family planning services with an increase in contraceptive prevalence rate from 20%–62%. And for outpatients services over 6,000 people have been treated with an average of 40% of those treated coming from outside Gumulira. The provision of health services gave rise to the formation of a Community Based Organization (CBO) and an HIV and AIDS support group providing group therapy.

If more support / resources were to become available, how would these resources be used, what would be the expected impact?

Additional resources would be applied for completing the construction of staff houses for a health facility and construction of additional school blocks and teachers’ houses. The additional support would also be applied towards scaling up the project from only covering 5,000 people to 20,000–25,000. This would mean more people having access to safe drinking water, directly improving health by reducing illness cause by water-borne diseases; more people with access to opportunities for agricultural inputs on loan and other business loans for economic empowerment and for food production.

Additional support/resources would also be applied for improving energy supply for the village by connecting the village to the national electricity grid and giving more business opportunities in the village, including processing and pumping water for irrigation purposes. A gravity-fed piped-water system is another project for additional resources.

How has the support from Raising Malawi changed the long-term outlook for the community at Gumulira?

The support for Raising Malawi has indeed changed the long-term outlook of the Gumulira community. For example, the community school now has a new school and six additional classrooms, complete with school meals kitchens. The community now has a multi-purpose community center, the meeting place for Gumulira. The Gumulira community is now connected to the world through the provision of a network cellular phone within a 15 km radius (over nine miles). The number of cellular phones is ever on the increase from ZERO in September 2006 to over 400 in July 2010.

The provision of agricultural inputs and hybrid maize seed has completely changed the food security situation and the maize planting technology of one seed per planting station has changed the production system. Access to clean water has now assured that the various water committees entered into maintenance contracts of their water points with an area mechanic.

Receive Gumulira updates from Raising Malawi.

To learn how you can support the work of Raising Malawi, please visit here.

Before I share with you a letter I recently received, I wanted to remind you of the numbers, to give you the scope of what we're up against in Malawi—it's sobering.

The figures include:

• Malawi has one of the highest prevalence rates in the world: 12% of 15–49-year-old Malawians carry the virus,
• About 85,000 adult and children die annual due to the virus, and
• Around 700,000 orphaned because of the AIDS pandemic.

As dire as the numbers are, I adamantly believe organizations like the Lighthouse Trust can begin to move the needle in the other direction, but only if given the support, resources, and time necessary to setup the infrastructure necessary to stem the tide of this epidemic.

From the Lighthouse Trust:

Thirteen years ago, Lighthouse Trust was the first public clinic in Malawi to open its doors and help people infected with HIV. Now, they are the largest integrated HIV testing, treatment, and care clinic in the country. They treat over 12,000 patients with critical anti-retroviral therapy (ART), seeing almost 4,000 patients per month at their two urban clinics and 31 rural clinics. Lighthouse also provides HIV counseling and testing for almost 4,000 people per month. Working closely with local partners, Lighthouse provides integrated care to help patients get all the health services they need under one roof. Since many people travel far to get to the clinic and have many healthcare needs at the same time, having access to more services in one location is vital. Patients at Lighthouse also receive treatment for malaria, TB, cancer, and many other conditions that affect HIV-infected individuals more than those who are not infected.

In addition to the basic care services, Lighthouse provides many services that other clinics cannot. Lighthouse offers HIV testing and counseling for couples, on-site educational activities (a song about prevention of mother to child HIV transmission, for instance); nutritional counseling and therapeutic feeding for malnourished patients; and a social support and economic empowerment program in communities where patients live.

Lighthouse is also able to provide special attention for children infected with HIV. At Lighthouse, 700 patients are children under the age of 15, including 200 teenage girls between the ages of 11–15. We have tailored counseling and treatment for these patients, making sure that both the kids and their parents (or guardians) understand what HIV is, how to treat it, and how to live positively with HIV.

Lighthouse also uses an innovative electronic data system to manage patients. This means that patient information is entered and used during each patient visit, helping healthcare workers give consistent and correct care. There’s an excellent article about Lighthouse’s data system here.

Because of its quality care and motivated providers, Lighthouse Trust is also a World Health Organization Center of Excellence. Here are some photos from Lighthouse staff development day. You can tell Lighthouse staff is proud of what they do, and they work hard to continue improving to help those infected and affected with HIV in Malawi.

Having been on the ground in Malawi, in rural and urban areas, I can attest to just how intelligent the Lighthouse Trust's approach is to caring for infected individuals. I hope you're as eager as I am to track their success. Visit their website here.

By donating an appreciated asset that has been be owned for over one year, you will help to save Malawi’s orphans and vulnerable children from a life of poverty, disease, and needless suffering. At the same time, you may also benefit from an income tax charitable deduction at the current market value. Plus, you won’t pay any capital gains tax on your asset's appreciation.

Here's an example:

Two years ago, Michael bought stock for $5,000. Today this stock is valued at $25,000. If Michael simply sells his stock, he will have to report $15,000 in capital gains tax. At the current tax rate, that’s $3,000 in capital gains tax. But if Michael donates the stock to Raising Malawi, he’ll receive a charitable income tax deduction of the full $25K, and he won’t have to report any capital gains!

Your assets have never been more appreciated.

To learn more about how your appreciated assets will benefit our mission, or to make a donation, contact Raising Malawi at +1 (310) 601 1023.

Please consult your tax advisor before making a donation of appreciated assets to Raising Malawi.

Director Nathan Rissman and team would like to send a special thanks to all our supporters for making this possible. Associate producer Grant James accepted the award at the ceremony.

The program is a collaboration between the Melete Foundation, Raising Malawi, and the Joyce Banda Foundation International.

From July 15 to August 17, the teachers will travel around Malawi visiting schools and orphanages. In collaboration with the partner foundations, the teachers will work with local teachers and students to develop lesson plans and create programs to improve education at these facilities. The three teachers will also construct lesson plans from their time in Africa to teach their students in the states about the Malawian culture.

Click to learn more about the Melete Foundation or the Joyce Banda Foundation.

Follow the Melete Foundation's activities on Twitter here.

The numbers are startling: about one-third of Malawians contract malaria every year; the vast majority of the disease’s victims are vulnerable children.

This effort, which includes researchers from University of Maryland, University of Michigan and Harvard, among others, will create a self-sustained research collaborative capable of developing new anti-malaria strategies.

According to Dr. Taylor, Malawi is an ideal location for the study:

With its political will, track record in malaria research and ecological diversity, [Malawi] has the potential to be a site for transformative research on malaria control, prevention and elimination.

Bolstering Health Care in Malawi

Raising Malawi is ramping up its efforts to rid Malawi of preventable diseases. For more information, read the latest blog post from Peter Hotez, MD, PhD.

Dr. Hotez, the President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, recently joined Raising Malawi's Medical Advisory Committee as a special advisor on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD).

If you have not been touched by this documentary already, then be sure to watch it to see why and how Madonna came to care so much for the people of Malawi.

The Council for Non Governmental Organisations in Malawi, an umbrella body for NGOs, had urged the government to,

[C]onsider mobilizing resources for relief operations other than wait until the ugly face of this [possible] catastrophe begins to take its toll on the people".

If no funding can be found by October, the number of vulnerable Malawians will grow from 718,000 today to approximately 1.1 million.

Ending Hunger in Malawi

Raising Malawi works with community based organizations to ensure the hungry get the help they need. Learn more about how you can partner with Madonna and Raising Malawi to make news of grain and resource shortages a thing of the past.

Image by Swathi Sridharan used under Creative Commons. Click here to view more work.

The NTDs are a group of 13 parasitic and bacterial infections affecting an estimated 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day—a group sometimes referred to as the “bottom billion”. Intestinal worms (hookworm. roundworm and tapeworm), schistosomiasis (snail fever/bilharzia), lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are among the most common seven NTDs. These infections result in lifelong disability and adversely affect childhood development and worker productivity.

Many are surprised to learn that the majority of the bottom billion and most Malawians suffer from at least one NTD. Of the 14 million people who live in Malawi, 11 million are at risk for infection with schistosomiasis and almost all of the children have intestinal worms. Typically these worms live throughout their childhood years and the consequences are devastating. Hookworm infection and schistosomiasis stunt physical growth and fitness and also reduce intelligence and memory. As a consequence, NTDs are one of the leading health problems in Malawi and a major reason why children do not learn or succeed in school. Ultimately, when these children grow to become adults are less successful when they enter the work force. Research indicates that hookworm, and presumably other NTDs, reduce future wage earning by 43%.

Adults are also deeply affected by the NTDs. Much of the adult population of Malawi suffers from the NTD known as lymphatic filariasis, which causes a disfiguring condition of the limbs and genitals. As a consequence, they are too sick to go to work and harvest crops. Another NTD, onchocerciasis, transmitted by infected Simulium black flies living near streams, rivers, and other bodies of water, is a leading cause of blindness. More than one million people in Malawi are at risk for river blindness.

NTDs are particularly devastating for young girls and women. In Malawi, schistosomiasis results in ulcers of the cervix and uterus, so that young girls grow up suffering from chronic genital pain and bleeding. New information also indicates that these ulcers increase the susceptibility of girls and young women to HIV/AIDS three-fold. In Malawi, schistosomiasis is an important co-factor in the country’s AIDS epidemic. Furthermore, lymphatic filariasis stigmatizes girls and women and prevents them from marrying or holding and caring for their children—even though the disease is not transmitted by physical contact.

But there is hope. At the Global Network for NTDs we are promoting a package of drugs, (sometimes called the “rapid impact” package) most of which are either donated by the pharmaceutical companies or the drugs are available at extremely low cost. Indeed, we can control or prevent the most common NTDs such as intestinal worm infections, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and onchocerciasis with the rapid impact package and do this for as little as 50 cents per person per year! Imagine taking on a group of diseases that affect more than 1 in 6 people worldwide—more than HIV/AIDs, TB, and malaria combined—for less than US $1 annually!

In the coming weeks and months I look forward to writing additional blog posts on NTDs and calling attention to the plight of Malawi’s poorest who needlessly suffer from these conditions. In the meantime, I am providing some links on our papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, and Public Library of Science so you can learn more about the NTDs in Africa, as well as my book Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases.

I am excited that Madonna has lent her time to learn more about NTDs and how they affect the people she cares about in Malawi.

The 16th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria, admonishes us to “repair the world” tikkun olam, embarking on an ambitious initiative to eliminate the NTDs in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa represents the most vital and urgent way I can think of to initiate repair.

Use one of the icons below as your Facebook or Twitter image:

When Madonna pledged to match your contributions to Raising Malawi, we never dreamed you would be this generous. We set an ambitious goal of $150,000 -- or so we thought -- and hoped for the best.

Simply put: we smashed our goal. Donations have poured in from our supporters around the world totaling more than $1 million with Madonna's match.

Help us keep building this momentum by telling your friends that you support the work of Raising Malawi. It's incredible -- the more people learn about the work we are doing in Malawi, the more people want to get involved.

Thank you again for your continued support.

— Philippe

While there has been much good news to report from Malawi and Africa lately, we must remember there is plenty of work to be done.

Last week Thierry Durand, an operations director for Doctors Without Borders, wrote that it is time to acknowledge clear "systemic failures in measles prevention programs" in Africa.

Durand's statement came in response to the unfortunate fact that measles epidemics persist despite long-running vaccinations programs.

It has been especially discouraging that stable countries such as Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa have been experiencing outbreaks, as warring countries and conflict traditionally bear this burden. Durand noted, "[t]here’s a problem if such epidemics occur in countries such as these, and it can only indicate dysfunctions or weaknesses in the routine vaccination system."

In the past six months, a measles outbreak in Malawi has killed 82 Malawians, predominantly children, and infected more than 17,000. Each case of measles was completely preventable.

Efforts are underway in rural areas to raise awareness and encourage vaccination and treatment.

Image by Julien Harneis. Republished here under Creative Commons. Click to view more work.

The good news ensures breastfeeding is a viable option for thousands of HIV-positive mothers in Malawi and across Africa.

According to Roger Shapiro, author of a study from Havard’s School of Public Health, 

“What we found is that when we started any of the regimens during pregnancy, during the third trimester of pregnancy, and continued them through six months of breast feeding, we had extremely low rates of mother-to-child transmission (of HIV).“

These encouraging results highlight the need to aggressively find, test and treat HIV-positive pregnant women.

For more information on the devastating cost of HIV/AIDS in Malawi and how to stop the epidemic, click here.

Read the full article here.

You can read Study #1 here.

You can read Study #2 here.

Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon

Towards the end of last month there were two notable developments with our Partner, Millennium Promise, that I want to share with you.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s visit

First, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited the Mwandama Millennium Village to see progress firsthand. His visit not only raised the profile the village, it confirmed the positive impact this effective program is having in Malawi and around the world.

In his remarks delivered on May 30, Ban Ki-moon noted:

Mwandama has seen dramatic improvements in health and education. Bed-nets have been distributed to all households. Nearly everyone now has clean drinking water. Significantly more children go to school, including many more girls. Roughly 40 per cent of vulnerable people now get tested for AIDS. I saw many people using cell phones, and even solar-powered lights.

The key to these successes is strong leadership and good policy—specifically, well-integrated investments in education, health, agriculture and technology.

These programmes are all pragmatic, results-oriented and scaled to the real needs of real people. And this is only the beginning.

His words drive home what we have always believed at Raising Malawi: To succeed, projects must develop sustainable solutions by working with the people, just as the Millennium Villages Project does.

Providing food and shelter helps to establish an extremely important safety net. However, this type of aid merely addresses the symptoms of poverty rather than the root cause. It is the programs that explicitly invest in “education, health, agriculture, and technology” that will truly bring success.

This is why Raising Malawi supports the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, the Millennium Village in Gumulira, and the Raising Malawi-Consol Homes Orphan Care Center, in addition to programs that provide daily aid. In their own ways, each of these projects work with Malawians to ensure they are a part of developing a lasting, sustainable solution. And by all measures of progress, these programs are working.

Millennium Villages mid-term report

Around the same time as the General Secretary’s visit to Malawi, Millennium Promise released a positive mid-term report on their progress titled Harvests of Development in Rural Africa: The Millennium Villages After Three Years.

The news is good. From the report:

The MVP has hit on a crucial and too-often-neglected part of successful development: community-based and community-led integrated rural development, with a simultaneous focus on agriculture, health, education, gender equality, infrastructure, and business development. The initiative shows that targeted low-cost interventions are effective, and that community-based teams can successfully implement a holistic package of interventions.

Specifically, the Harvest report cites the following gains:

• Yields of maize crops have nearly tripled on average, bringing a 30% reduction in levels of chronic malnutrition among children under two years old,
• Over 80% of children receive school meals, leading to increased school attendance and better learning,
• A seven-fold increase in bed-net utilization has helped bring a nearly 60% average reduction in malaria prevalence,
• Over 40% average increase in women giving birth with skilled birth attendants, and
• More than three-fold average increase in access to an improved water

The results I have seen on the ground in Gumulira Millennium Village mirror the findings of the Harvest report:

• Gumulira families are food secure and producing surpluses for sale after three seasons of MVP agricultural support,
• Health services are greatly improved,
• Nearly all of Gumulira’s 1,600 children are enrolled in school, and
• Villagers recently completed a town center that will serve as a key gathering place for community events and business

To learn about our impact in Gumulira and elsewhere in Malawi, read more and sign up for updates here.

Times writer Fred A. Bernstein begins the piece:

In the video, on YouTube, Madonna is seen laying the first brick at a school in Lilongwe, Malawi. But to connoisseurs of architecture, the real star of the video is the man standing next to Madonna, alongside a rendering of the 40-acre campus. He is Markus Dochantschi, the German-born, New York-based designer of what is called the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

Continue reading the piece here.

You can read a post from studioMDA on the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls here.

If you have not been touched by this documentary already, then be sure to watch it to see why and how Madonna came to care so much for the people of Malawi.

I have always believed love conquers all - yesterday I got to see it in action.

In the last week over 30,000 of you added your name to mine calling for the release of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga - the Malawi couple sentenced to 14 years hard labor for the "crime" of homosexuality. With incredible joy, I am writing to share with you that Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika has ordered their release. Steven and Tiwonge were freed on Saturday night.

They have won their freedom and you have been a part of it.

We celebrate this astounding turn of events with Steven, Tiwonge, and the countless Malawians fighting for their release. It is a historic day for Malawi.

Though they are free from prison, sadly their safety and future in Malawi is still unknown. I hope this is just the beginning of our work together.

Human rights injustices continue for so many Malawians facing poverty, disease, and a lack of critical resources. There are still over two million orphans and vulnerable children who need to experience love's embrace.

It is going to take the love and creativity of all of us to bring justice to the people of Malawi.  

Thank you for joining me in Raising Malawi.

With great love,
Madonna

Share your thoughts with Madonna on this important day in Malawi:
http://www.raisingmalawi.org/lovewins

Betsy McKay writes:

'We're seeing a larger and more accelerated decrease than we thought,' said Christopher J.L.Murray, the institute's director and lead author of the study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 'In many developing regions, the rates of decline in the last decade are speeding up compared to the 1990s.'

Those regions include all of sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 50% of deaths in children under five occur. Rates of mortality in children under age five are declining at more than 2% a year in 25 sub-Saharan African countries, with progress particularly strong in Madagascar, Malawi, and Ethiopia, among other countries, Dr. Murray said.

A Unicef official welcomed the findings. 'It shows we're making achievements that were unimaginable even 10 years ago,' said Mickey Chopra, Unicef's chief of health. He cited results in Niger and Malawi—where child deaths have been reduced sharply since 1990 despite a lack of economic growth—'as impressive.

While this is encouraging, McKay notes the 2.1 percent decline a year still does not meet the 4.4 percent annual decline needed to meet the United Nation's goal of reducing deaths in children under the age of five by two-thirds before 2015.

There is still more work to be done.

Read her entire article here.
You can find the report here.

I am shocked and saddened by the decision made this week by the Malawian court, which sentenced two innocent men to prison.

As a matter of principle, I believe in equal rights for all people, no matter what their gender, race, color, religion, or sexual orientation.

This week, Malawi took a giant step backward. The world is filled with pain and suffering; therefore, we must support our basic human right to love and be loved.

I call upon the progressive men and women of Malawi—and around the world—to challenge this decision in the name of human dignity and equal rights for all.

Won't you join me by signing this statement?

The trip to Africa will come at the end of May, with Moon visiting Malawi the 28th and 29th.

The UN has yet to make available the complete details of his itinerary. However, documents confirm the trip should include a trip to a Millennium Village in Malawi.

The Millennium Village Project, developed by the Earth Institute at Columbia University for the UN, aims to lift people out of poverty through sustainable community-led investment. The villages offer a holistic, innovative model at helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty through small investments of around US $100 per person each year. The projects also work with villagers on sustainable agriculture practices, water resources, education, job training, and farming assistance.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, executive director of the Earth Institute and a former director of the UN Millennium Project, recently accompanied Madonna to a bricklaying ceremony for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. Raising Malawi sponsors a Millennium Village in Gumulira, Malawi.

In Uganda and Burundi, Ban will focus on the International Criminal Court Review Conference and peace building. He will also meet with political leaders of all three African countries.