Malawi Orphan Care Program – 2024 Update

We are thankful for another year of sustaining the Malawi Orphan Care Program and we are deeply grateful to you, our donors, for enabling this program to continue. We had the unique privilege of visiting with our partners in Malawi twice in the past six months. In October 2023, we spent nine days visiting each of our Malawi orphan care centers on-site. Then in January 2024, all of the center leaders came to a central location and we had a conference where they could share ideas and encouragement with each other. It’s a great blessing to see these brothers and sisters in Christ striving each day to serve their communities even with limited resources.

At the present time, there are four orphan care centers that we work with. Each of those four centers have at least six different villages that they work in. This enables the Malawi Orphan Care Program to reach almost 2,000 children each year. Two of the orphan care programs work mainly with pre-school age children (Chibulika and Neighbor Mission), while the other two programs (Lizulu and Thandizo) work with children from preschool through secondary school. As a result, there are unique aspects to what each program offers but the consistent themes are biblical teaching, food supplements, basic clothing or school uniforms, and access to medical care.

The challenges in Malawi seem to mount with each year we write this update. The economic situation is extremely tenuous as some common food staples such as oil, rice and maize have increased in price up to 300%. Many Malawians still live under the international poverty line of $2 USD per day so you can imagine the impact of 300% increases in food costs. It’s devastating, especially to the elderly who are caring for their orphaned grandchildren.

We recognize that long-term food relief is not viable. This is why we have recently connected our orphan care center leadership teams with another ministry in Malawi called Foundations for Farming. They provide wholistic, Christian based training on sustainable agriculture methods as well as budgeting, savings, and other practical lessons. At Thandizo Orphan Care in October, we were able to see one of the new demonstration plots using these methods. It was so encouraging to see about 40 caregivers in the community come together to irrigate the field and produce a crop that generated about $350 USD for the care of orphans. While that may not seem like a lot, the activity itself proved to the community what could be done and they already have a much larger field set aside for this next year. This kind of transformation may take a generation to fully take root but we believe that it honors God to equip our neighbors so that they can provide for themselves and their communities. Please pray that God would bless these training efforts going forward.

Please continue to pray for the 2,000+ precious souls reached each year through the Malawi Orphan Care Program. Their lives are precious in His sight. We are so grateful for your partnership in this endeavor.