Kabudula Education and Empowerment Project


Immediate Relief, Long-Term Sustainability

WAM’s Kabudula Education and Empowerment Project (KEEP) is a comprehensive community based education program. WAM’s work at Kabudula Community Hospital has inspired this program, geared toward improving the level of education Kabudula, as we believe that the long term health of the community will be best served and sustained through a combination of medical interventions and educational supports. WAM plans to make a long-term investment in Kabudula’s students, so that these children can become the future clinical staff, teachers, and leaders of the region.

Before the students can become the next generation of Kabudula’s leaders, they will need to overcome significant barriers blocking their educational success.  Among these barriers are:

  • 75% drop out rate from freshman to senior year;
  • 90% fail rate on national exams required for college;
  • no money for college tuition, even if accepted;
  • near impossibility for the large number of orphans to pay high school tuition;
  • lack of basic school supplies such as pens, notebooks, and chalk;
  • lack of library and books (2 books per 60 students);
  • no science laboratory, even though the national exams take place in a laboratory, leading these students to leave the science section blank, and setting them up for failure;
  • health stressors that WAM is working to alleviate, including malaria, HIV, pneumonia and malnutrition; and
  • home stressors, including poor shelter, no electricity to study, and pressure to work/relieve family of burden of school fees.

Through partnering with the community, WAM and KEEP seek to overcome these challenges through thoughtful, sustainable, and low-cost/high yield interventions, that carry virtually no administrative costs.  All of KEEP’s interventions are determined in collaboration with the students and faculty at the schools, and the Traditional Authority (chief) of Kabudula.

Current and ongoing projects of the Kabudula Education & Empowerment Project include:

  • KEEPing orphans and other vulnerable students in school by providing high school scholarships;
  • assisting with much needed school supplies and books;
  • partnering with teachers and students to generate and actualize ideas for low-cost community service projects, such as peer-counseling and planting trees;
  • providing volunteers to teach English;
  • training students and faculty on peer counseling skills; and
  • providing volunteers to teach yoga, balls for students to play football, and other fun, empowering, community building activities.

Longer term goals include raising funds and awareness to:

  • build a library for the secondary school;
  • build a science laboratory for the secondary school;
  • provide scholarships for qualified students who do pass national exams to attend college, with binding agreements for those students to work in Kabudula after obtaining professional credentials;
  • partner with Malawian government and education-based NGOs to improve education in Kabudula.

With your support, we hope that eventually the students of the region are staffing the hospital, teaching in the schools, and building solutions for a better future for the generations to come!