Friends of Mutale

The aim of Friends of Mutale is to give children and youth in the area a chance in life their parents never had, to give them access to the world most of us in the West take for granted. Teenagers come home with home work stating they must use the internet, the closest internet café is 200km away!!or they must use there local library, again 200km away. Through Friends of Mutale a small library has been initiated in the village of Bennde-Mutale, this is with-in the LEARNING CENTRE, by the end of 2010 computer literacy will be a norm, by July 2010 DSTV (satellite TV) will be used for educational programme, documentaries and film nights for the youth. This has been made possible by the kindness of charity from across the world; Denmark, United Kingdom, USA, South Africa, Holland, France and Cuba.

Since we have been established we have been involved in after school clubs, where students from the primary school can come and enjoy educational games (English, maths, geography), use the library and then for an hour after play in a safe educational environment. In addition to this we are trying to help local crèches who at the moment get limited support from the local government. We assist these crèches with a mobile toy library, we travel to these crèches, hand out educational toys to the children for two hours or so, we play music and spend time with the children assisting the educators. Over the past few years it is hard to put a quantitative figure on the number of people assisted, in the after school programme we have on average 40 students a day, and with in the crèches the total number of children we help is 130. Volunteers have formed an important part in fulfilling the aims and goals of Friends of Mutale.