Milonga Community Day School

A banana tree grows in the school garden of Milonga Community Day Secondary School. Next season, it will bear fruit and provide some sustenance for the girls who attend AGE Africa’s after-school club: Creating Health Approaches to Success (CHATS). They are hungry when classes end and look forward to when that tree will provide snacks. Today, the cost of a bag of maize is 100,000 Malawian Kwacha ($57.00). The minimum wage is $51.90/month. The math doesn’t compute, and people everywhere are hungry.

And yet, the girls persevere. Nestled beneath Mount Mulanje, Milonga School is in one of the most beautiful locations you could imagine for an educational setting. They recently replaced the roof that was torn off during a storm, and they have a new head teacher running the show. Janet started the school garden and is the advocate for AGE Africa’s CHATS program, which takes place on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m.

Girls freshman through seniors gather to discuss a topic chosen from the CHATS manual. It’s run by a

peer leader who asks questions of the group: What is negative peer pressure? (Answer: “It is when someone is forcing you to do something bad.”)  What is positive peer pressure? (Answer: Working hard in class)

Bad peer pressure	Good peer pressure
Running away from school	Work hard at school
Drinking beer	Abstainance
Prostitution

These kids are 12/13/14 years old– that prostitution is among the items to avoid is revealing. In these rural areas of Malawi, only 4-6% of girls will even make it to high school, much less complete it. Some are sold off in child marriage, some are trafficked, some work in their family gardens, and some simply are not prioritized or cannot afford it. 

The power of the CHATS program is that it teaches each one of them that there are options—that by continuing with school, they will avoid early child marriage, and that if they work hard and persevere, they can be like Ivy.

I met Ivy yesterday. She was the first girl in her village to go to university, and next year she will be the first to graduate. Ivy will be a doctor, and she is then slated to continue with a specialty in neurosurgery. She is an AGE Africa scholar through and through. From her most humble beginnings, her education, starting in her freshman year, has been underwritten by AGE Africa. This is how a nation is changed– one girl at a time. Today, there are 30 kids in her village who are preparing for university. Through her example, the shift in mindset about education has taken place– in one generation!

Under the trees at Milonga School, the girls are role-playing ways to tell their parents that they refuse to be forced into child marriage. The children of the village watch, absorb, and learn the language of self-agency. And we are together watching the generational change of a nation happen before our very eyes.