Saint Faith's has for many years supported a series of overseas churches, hospitals and schools as ongoing Missionary Projects. Members of the congregation have provided funding through fund-raising events and personal gifts, and receive news of the results of their efforts through links with the countries concerned.

For several years now, our project has been MEDIC MALAWI, an organisation which supports the Anglican hospital and school at Mtunthama in the African state of Malawi. Members of our congregation have visited Malawi on several occasions, and we have been delighted to be visited in turn by clergy and lay people from Malawi.

Our support over the years has helped to alleviate critical food shortages and has also helped to expand the vital facilities offered by the Saint Andrew's Clinic, and has also done much to finance the building and supplying of the Saint Faith's Kindergarten; we are pleased and proud that this school carried the name of our Church. It is good also to be able to report that the congregation of our sister Church of Saint Mary, Waterloo Park, have now pledged to fund the wages of a kindergarten teacher there on a regular basis.

On this page you can read news and pictures from Medic Malawi, reporting on the work done and support given by many churches and organisations. We begin with a report, reproduced from a 2004 edition of our parish magazine 'Newslink', complied by Margaret Houghton. It is accompanied by photographs of the schoolchildren, sporting their distinctive 'Saint Faith's' pullovers and accompanied by the Ven. Frank Dzantenge and his wife Eunice - and also of the clinic staff at Mtunthama. Further information and pictures are added beneath as bulletins are received from various sources.

Follow the link at the foot of this page for the official Medic Malawi website.

'As in a lot of successful ventures, little is forthcoming when all is running smoothly; hence the absence of recent news about St. Andrew’s Clinic, Mtunthama.. However, I hope that supporters at St Faith’s will find the following information not just of interest, but an astounding list of achievements concerning the on-going development of Medic Malawi.

Staff at Saint Andrew's Clinic now number 40, between 40 to 70 outpatients are seen daily, mainly for malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia, accidents and, unfortunately, increasing numbers of meningitis. Three to four people are admitted daily with serious conditions of the above. Anaemia is also a great problem among the young. Ante-natal clinics are held twice a week, attended by 50 to 70 patients. Between two and five babies are born at the clinic each day, with a maximum of 8 in one night! The under-5 clinic, started during the dreadful famine two years ago, is receiving much needed help from UNICEF, Action Against Hunger, CHAM, and Norwegian Church Aid.

Donations of maize flour, cooking oil, milk, blankets, mosquito nets and some medical supplies has eased the pressure on Medic Malawi, and frees funds to allow further developments. Two Homecraft workers have joined the team to teach nutrition,  hygiene  and  child  care.   Once  a week,  a  demonstration  meal is provided, teaching mothers how best to make use of the foods available; the children of those attending are given a meal, and then take home enough food to feed them for the rest of the week. Also under way is an under-5 immunisation programme against measles, T.B. and polio.

Soon the local chiefs, who control all the land surrounding the Hospital, are to be approached, with a view to their providing more land for further developments. A second ambulance has now been purchased and so sights are set on starting Outreach Clinics in areas where there is no medical care available, and establishing follow-up clinics in the villages to build on the work of the under-5 nutrition programme.

St Faith’s Kindergarten is thriving. Forty children, about half of whom are orphans, attend each day. They play, learn songs and rhymes and are fed. With funds donated by a Dawlish lady, toys, including a tricycle, have been provided, together with much-needed cash to pay the helpers, who have worked as volunteers for the past few months, as money has been in short supply. This will be sufficient to tide the kindergarten over until St. Mary’s, Waterloo Park, manage to establish their support for the upkeep of salaries, which is a wonderful and much-needed opportunity to continue the basic work these helpers have been doing.

All water to the Hospital is now supplied from their own bore-hole, no more pipes running from the lake at Kamuzu Academy. The management team at the Hospital is indeed excelling itself! Increasing confidence in its abilities means Medic Malawi can look forward to them being able to take on more and more of the major decisions.

Although it is a delight to report all these successes, beyond the wildest dreams of the founders of Medic Malawi, there is always the ever-close concern of further food shortages. Indeed it is anticipated that by October of this year another major food shortage will have started, although hopefully not as severe as the last.

It is because of such constant dangers that it never pays to be complacent; the support so generously given by St. Faith’s congregation and friends is ever needed, and guaranteed to ‘hit where it hurts’ every time.

Many, many thanks for the continued interest and help provided.'
 

Bulletin May 2005

Margaret Houghton writes again in our parish magazine:

It is my great pleasure in writing that for the second time I can report the continuing well-being of St.Andrew’s Clinic, Mtunthama and its staff.
 
Unfortunately the anticipated arrival of a young volunteer doctor to work at the Academy, with a built-in arrangement to work one day a week at St.Andrew’s, did not happen and so still no doctor.  However, things are moving at a fast pace and the Clinic now possesses a fully operating scanner and so can provide an up to date service to the community in modern diagnoses.  Also, thanks to Medic Malawi’s ever generous supporter making a further anonymous donation of £10,000, the laying of the foundations for the long awaited operating theatre is now underway.  Thank you so much for all you are doing to help the Clinic, which would not have progressed so much without your financial support.
 
St. Faith’s kindergarten is more than thriving; positively overflowing.  Orphans are now arriving to take their place, which can present a problem, how can they be turned away?  Having found a place for them at the kindergarten, it is a natural progression to take responsibility for them, no mean task without accommodation and carers.  Is this going to be another project, one might ask.  I think not; frequently Malawi children are called orphans when they lose one parent.
 
This year more young people are planning visits to St. Andrew;s Clinic to help in various ways.  Indeed at present two young people are offering time during their GAP year, fulfilling any roll asked of them. The feedback is great enthusiasm of being part of such a community and experiencing the warmth of the welcome they have received and the gratitude of the Malawi people for all the help given.
 
Over the past few months friends of Medic Malawi at St. Faith‘s have donated over £400; a tremendous help and I do so thank these people.

Bulletin October 2007

Margaret Houghton supplied this article for our parish magazine

Go to the Medic Malawi website
 
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