Yesterday Malawi Education Minister Eunice Kazembe challenged the work of Madonna's charity in the African country following last month'sannouncement of the completion of 10 schools together with buildOn.
"The schools Raising Malawi claims to have constructed were already in existence," Kazembe said. "Raising Malawi only built 10 classroom blocks and not schools. People should know the difference between the two."
Today buildOn has issued today the following statement about the schools they constructed in partnership with Raising Malawi.
In January of 2012, buildOn partnered with Raising Malawi to build ten two-classroom schools for rural villages of the Kasungu District of Malawi. Each school was built with a corrugated metal roof and poured concrete floor.
The locations for each school were chosen in partnership with the District Education Manager’s Office in the Kasungu District. Each village that was selected had no adequate school structure; priority was given to villages with no school infrastructure at all. Prior to buildOn and Raising Malawi, children in these villages attended classes in either a temporary structure or outside under a tree. Each classroom is built to hold 50 children at any given time.
Each school was constructed in partnership with the communities who will benefit from the structures. buildOn and Raising Malawi provided the construction materials, transportation, skilled labor, project management, and construction plans. Each partnering community provides a gender-balanced leadership team, volunteer labor, land, local building materials, and authorization from the government to have a school. Each community also agrees that boys and girls will attend schools in equal numbers. The District of Education Manager’s Office in Kasungu has provided 44 educators for the schools who are now teaching the Ministry’s approved curriculum. Once completed each community and school leadership team manages the use of each structure.
buildOn has constructed 72 two-classroom schools Malawi since 1993. In 2013, we plan to build 23 additional two-classroom schools in the Kasungu and Neno District of Malawi in partnership with each region’s District Education Manager’s office.