Great Minds Bright Futures are now helping at Dzaleka Refugee Camp
Great Minds Bright Futures are now helping at Dzaleka Refugee Camp.
Originally designed for 10,000 refugees, the camp now houses over 52,000 people. The conditions are overcrowded and squalid.
It is located less than 10km from our main feeding centre at Chunzu, Dowa and I have passed through on the main road so many times, I was fascinated and wanted to see more.
In November last year, I went to meet the LGBTQ+ community and found out for myself the conditions that residents were facing. It really touched me.
Often, we think of refugees travelling thousands of miles and finally crossing the channel to settle in the UK, but we don’t often think about those escaping poverty, war and genocide to another country in Africa, like Malawi.
The whole site was originally built as a political prison with 6,000 inmates from 1964 to 1994, but later repurposed to become a refugee camp, housing refugees from Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition to these three main populations there are also those from Ethiopia and Uganda.
After my meeting with the LGBTQ+ community, I started to explore if there were any underfunded orphan centres on the camp that needed the help of Great Minds Bright Futures. And of course there was.
I found Tingathe orphanage, run by several volunteers including Mutesi and John. They were school teachers living off $12 per month, trying to feed around fifty orphans, but finding it incredibly difficult to do so.
We invited them over the Chunzu to see our main project, to show them our feeding programme and our activities for our children. Our team visited them to meet the Dzaleka children and in February we started our commitment to provide funds to feed the children everyday.
There are now sixty children meeting at the centre and in February and I made a surprise visit with some gifts for the children.
I arrived with my Great Minds Bright Futures team, after being stuck in the mud in the tiny lanes of Dzaleka. As the children started to come in, I was able to give them a page from a colouring book and some pencils to colour a picture. Then Mutesi arrived. She cried and hugged me as her dream of caring “properly” for the children of Dzaleka had come true.
We distributed hygiene packs given to us by Anna Mariana Casemiro (wife of Brazillian footballer Casemiro, currently playing for Manchester United) and daughter Sara, plus those donated by Chloe Ainscough (wife of non-Brazillian Footballer, but equally amazing guy, Craig) and daughter Sophia following a collection at The Ryleys Girls and Boys Preparatory School in the UK.
The children were so grateful for the gifts which included jumpers and T shirts, as well as hygiene packs and pencil cases.
I spent a few hours with them but promised I would return in the Summer with my own children.
As I left, I felt an overwhelming urge of happiness, as we were able to improve the lives of these beautiful children, but also sadness as I knew the task ahead of us to find a permanent home for these sixty children (who currently meet in an uncovered yard between a few houses which is hardly ideal). I also need to find funding for school fees as some of the children will be attending high school in September. Not the two little ones who are brought by older siblings who are just three months old.
I will never forget the smiles of the Great Minds Bright Futures children at Dzaleka Refugee Camp.
Just to give you some idea, the Malawi government gives every household, $5 per month to live. It is not enough. Our own children at our new centre cost us over $16 per month to feed. How on earth do the Malawi government expect an adult to survive on $5??
If you would like to help us, help the children of Dzaleka, please donate on our website.
