Malawi visit May 2018

Malawi visit May 2018

Phil Irvin, Shine Relief Co-founder, and Trustee, recently spent his week’s annual leave with Co-Founders Suzen and Hastings in Malawi. Its been nearly a year since the last visit when Deborah and Lynley, together with the Shine NZ team, spent 3 weeks on the ground.
With grant applications in the pipeline to get businesses at Shine Village off the ground, this time on the ground was key for everyone. Our next major plan is to build a Maize Mill, however, it needs to be powered by electricity, as the diesel option is too expensive and it also taints the flavour of the flour. The supply of electricity, which still needs bringing to the area is very costly and is a major part of the development costs which we have yet to secure.
The overall vision is to gradually add buildings to the site, creating a hub of new small businesses, providing jobs and generating income to support Shine Village and community development in future years.

A key meeting held with Johannes Bos at Farming Gods Way gave Shine insight into a new building method being developed which does not involve the traditional costly method of firing bricks. The machine compresses bricks to a level which then only requires them to be dried in the sun!
As Shine will be erecting buildings for schooling, vocational training and hosting more children and volunteers in years to come, we are looking into this project in greater depth.

Moringa trees
We now have over 600 seedlings growing from the first two trees which we planted two years ago at Shine Village!
Phil had the opportunity to chat with a local lady Annie who operates a moringa oil refinery business. She will buy our moringa seeds when we are ready to harvest in 18 months time.

Phil and Hastings also made visits to the Mikolongwe College and the Blantyre Trade Fare where two of our students were on their work placement ( click below for the interview!)
Our other student, Innocent, who is studying Agriculture in Blantyre, was over the moon when he received a 16GB Alcatel Tablet kindly donated by a sponsor in the UK. He was completely speechless, as he never really imagined he would receive such an item! It will go a long way in helping him with his studies and prepare for his lessons.The final few days were spent with Pastor Lino and Pastor Kumvera, discussing plans the summer visit. Shine will be hosting a youth and church leadership conference with guests from South Africa at Shine Centre and Songani AOG Church in Zomba. We truly believe that the gospel message will spread through young people, out across the rural areas surrounding Zomba. We aim to encourage and train emerging leaders to go to into the villages which currently have little access to discipleship opportunities.

The visit will take place in September 2018. Deborah and Phil will be taking a group from the UK who will help run short workshops for the younger children and the women at Shine Village, and lend a hand re-decorating the Children’s home ready for the first intake of children in September.

Congratulations to Mayeso Lazaro on completing his PhD with the School of Enviromental Sciences at Hull University. The research which Mayeso conducted in Malawi will be used to form a project to support grandfathers caring for orphans. We are hoping to see this start at Shine Village in the coming year.