Posted on 06/04/2018 6:36:58 PM PDT by bitt
"Janet Littlefield, founder of Go! Malawi, teaches young Malawians—especially girls—to believe in themselves."
The biggest cultural shifts start small.
“It started with one kid who needed to go to school, and I just started paying,” says Janet Littlefield, a 42-year-old special education teacher from Hebron who has changed the educational landscape in a dozen rural villages in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa. “Then it was two kids, three kids… I started working second jobs and tutoring so I could pay for kids to go to school.”
When Littlefield graduated from Skidmore College in 1998, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to rural Malawi. “I’d been placed in a school, and there would be over 100 kids just sitting on the floor,” she says, describing the year that changed the trajectory of her life.
“We are all citizens of this one world, and if anyone is in a position to help someone else they must do so regardless of their birthplace,” Littlefield says. “I don’t think a Malawian’s life or future is any less valuable or important than an American’s. I have five children: three Malawian and two American. My American children are not more important than my Malawian children. I look at any person who needs assistance as an equal member of this world and who has the right to live free of hunger, suffering and poverty.”
What she saw in Malawi 20 years ago—malnourished children in tattered clothes—wasn’t something she could leave behind at the end of her year of Peace Corps service. With public education ending after the eighth grade, Littlefield saw girls marrying young, having more children than they could support and living their lives with their eyes averted, hands over mouths, shoulders slumped, as if they were “trying to take up less space.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mainewomenmagazine.com ...
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I can personally vouch for this organization and after we pay The Boss here at FR, this would be a great place to send any amount of money.
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Why “especially girls”?
My guess would be because they live at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy.
they are culturally second class citizens, and objects of abuse. No education, no rights, no hope..
No thanks.
Good intentions and good deeds but nauseating "progressive" world view.
Christian missionaries are the hope for that area. And when they produce some rock solid steadfast believers, maybe they can send some Christian missionaries to America.
“...Good intentions and good deeds but nauseating “progressive” world view...”
The Peace Corps has continued since Kennedy’s Camelot and has produced a largely negative overall result. We send college educated volunteers (well paid when they convert their humble salaries to local currency and they have dollars going into an account back home) who roll up their sleeves and do hands-on work. So we send labor to countries that have labor surpluses.
They do not keep the peace and when war comes, as in El Salvador in 1980, the Peace Corps gets out of the way. Look at the history of Honduras as taught on campuses. Standard Fruit is depicted at an exploiter of the people even though it brought jobs and income. The Peace Corps is depicted at a positive force even though it brought fat girls who eat at nice steak restaurants in cities like Danli and who insult locals by high-minded nebulas projects to help those who actually work.
Malawi is a predominantly muslim country but christianity is allowed and practiced. The administrators are, of course, Christian.
The article is slanted prog, but in reality, they are just establishing schools. Under extreme circumstances. Good for them, I say.
African Christians are already influencing. American Christian movements from moving too far left.
My oldest grandaughter became an RN. She works 9 mos stateside to pay for 3 mos each year in Malawi with a Christian Missions group providing care for rural Malawan children also. She loves those children. I would agree that donations to these people are well appreciated.
There are Christian missions in Malawi. Please see my previous comment.
Malawi is one of the african nations that does allow Christian missionaries. The Peace Corp may be as you say, I don’t know enough to attest generally, but they also have a negative conotation in my mind because of central America.
The Christian medical missions group for whom my granddaughter volunteers annually in Malawi is not the same. They are on a shoestring budget spending what they can for medical supplies to treat Malawan kids.
Charitable organizations vary in their mileage. The lady in the article *began* in the Peace Corp but it reads that she created a different organization to school girls and open an orphanage upon her return to the states. It says she works multiple jobs to fund these things. That’s not eating steak while natives starve...IMO
I’m a big supporter of orphanages because they are realistic approaches to the problems that children face.
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