Bright Pathways Project: The Mphatso Joseph Story in Malawi, Africa
My name is Mphatso Joseph, I come from Malawi and am the Director of the Bright Pathways Project. Malawi is the second poorest country in the world. We are a land-locked country on the Eastern side of the African continent - west of Madagascar. I would not be here today, introducing you to the Bright Pathways Project, if I had not received sponsorship for my education.
I am from a family of four boys. During the years of 2003 and 2004, I lost both of my parents and had to be responsible for my siblings. I was only 9 to 10 years old. At this stage we had to live with our grandmother, but she was in her old age and could not work so we had to do some small jobs like working in peoples gardens, and other things to make ends meet. This led me not to do well in my 6th grade education and I had to repeat it.
I was getting stronger, repeating grade 6, and I made up my mind that I don’t want to be like this and my family to be like this. I said to myself, education should be a weapon that I need to use to get out of all these hardships. I started working really hard despite all of these challenges. I was an orphan and looking after my brothers, but I was the smartest student in my entire class. When the results came after writing national exams, everyone knew it was me who had the highest score.
We struggled through the next three years, and I graduated from primary school to grade 8. Now the results are out, but I don’t know who is going to support me because after grade 8, school is not free. I was visiting an Aunt asking if she could support me with school, and she said she is not capable of doing that. But she knew somewhere where I could get help. She said there is an orphanage that could help me with my education. I had to plan to go to meet those who were running the orphanage. It was called Littlefield home - named after the founders’ father, David Littlefield, a well loved science educator in Camden. Established by Janet Littlefield who graduated from Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro.
I went there three times but was not able to meet the people who ran it. It was a six hour walk each way, to get to the orphanage. The third time I finally met this guy, and I showed him my exam results. He said, Oh yes, we can support you. Because I was selected to go to a government high school, which is a day school. At that time, tuition was around 1500 Malawi Kwacha which was equivalent to US $5 in 2008. I started my journey in high school, but it was still a challenging life because I was living in poverty and had to travel from home to school, a 30 minute walk each way. Even on holidays, I had to walk and report in, but this process showed my determination, responsibility and intelligence which helped me receive sponsorship for my high school education which was a boarding school situation.
At the boarding school, which was closer to my home, there were still a lot of challenges like sometimes no electricity, no library, no computers, and extremely limited access to learning. Also I was bullied for a whole year before I could finally afford a school uniform because I had been given a female goat and was able to sell the offspring to purchase my uniform. The director of the orphanage, who I had finally met after a whole year, suggested I go to a better school. So finally at a new school, I sat my final high school exams and I did very well. I waited to go to college. To get support to go to college, I had to do volunteer work. The Littlefield home had transformed into the non-profit Go! Malawi to concentrate on providing educational support. I was working as an assistant director for the Go! Malawi programs discovering deserving students, recording and balancing finances, and convening meetings with committee members of the villages and the community in general.
A year had passed, and I went to college to study electrical engineering. During holidays I was also working as a volunteer to keep supporting Go! Malawi. During this period, I met the volunteers coming from the United States and we worked together on several programs. I had one year to go to finish my degree program, which is when I met Rob Phifer. We worked together on several projects of teaching, tree planting, and educating community members, students, and teachers on the value of taking care of the environment. With the determination and interest from Rob, we convinced many schools from many areas even far away, to engage in our tree planting project in a section of the rainforest that was damaged. It was pouring rain the entire time, but everyone worked and we planted about 5000 seedlings! The seedlings had been grown in Malawi, started by Rob and myself until the special day that they were all big enough to be planted out.
Before 2016 Go! Malawi needed someone to work as a Director. Rob insisted it should be someone from Malawi. He encouraged me to take the job. Additionally, we also created a means for families to have sustainable charcoal for cooking and building materials by growing bamboo. Prior to 2016 people were going into the rainforest and illegally harvesting trees for charcoal. That was stripping the rainforest of its natural strength and causing erosion and water problems. Rob said he would do fundraising through many of his friends in the US in order to distribute sustainable bamboo for charcoal to communities. Due to limited funds, only several villages were able to receive the bamboo. But these villages with bamboo proved Rob’s theory that it would stop people from stripping the rainforest of its trees. And because of this success, we need to expand Rob’s legacy project of more bamboo to more villages and even to individual families through this new foundation that I am starting called the Bright Pathways Project – especially since Go! Malawi no longer exists.
We can achieve a greener involvement through the bamboo and tree planting programs, with basic needs costs covered by the sale of goat offspring. This ‘goat’ money will for example cover the costs outside of tuition like books, school uniforms, soap for bathing and laundry, shoes, and school materials like notebooks and pencils. For each deserving student, your donation of $75 will provide one goat, ten tree seedlings, and ten bamboo seedlings which in turn is an amazing opportunity to improve the students lives as well as their communities. The Bright Futures Program is more necessary than ever – especially because of the recent cuts to USAID.
So it is through this educational project that we will provide tree seedlings, bamboo, and one goat that we give a scholarship and responsibility to an individual deserving student to care for these things. The goat is an example of sustainable agriculture whose offspring will help support their education costs other than tuition, because there are always costs to education other than just the tuition. These three things, seedlings, bamboo and a goat, combined will help foster sustainability, conservation, responsibility, caring, stability for their families and communities, and education. The Bright Pathways Project with your support will increase opportunities for secondary school attendance as well as college studies. This will in turn improve all the communities and our futures.
Additional support is also required for the tuition of each College Student or Secondary School Student which is the majority of our annual budget.
These students have been selected to go on to government schools because of their excellent grades and sense of responsibility.
For example, each college student requires $1000 for tuition per year.
And each secondary school student requires $600 for tuition per year.
Your donation support can make a vast difference in these lives and communities.
My Bright Pathways Project plan is to see improvement and impact of students and communities over a period of four years – the time necessary for a secondary or college education.
For more information, or to make a donation to the Bright Pathways Project,
contact [email protected]
My name is Mphatso Joseph, I come from Malawi and am the Director of the Bright Pathways Project. Malawi is the second poorest country in the world. We are a land-locked country on the Eastern side of the African continent - west of Madagascar. I would not be here today, introducing you to the Bright Pathways Project, if I had not received sponsorship for my education.
I am from a family of four boys. During the years of 2003 and 2004, I lost both of my parents and had to be responsible for my siblings. I was only 9 to 10 years old. At this stage we had to live with our grandmother, but she was in her old age and could not work so we had to do some small jobs like working in peoples gardens, and other things to make ends meet. This led me not to do well in my 6th grade education and I had to repeat it.
I was getting stronger, repeating grade 6, and I made up my mind that I don’t want to be like this and my family to be like this. I said to myself, education should be a weapon that I need to use to get out of all these hardships. I started working really hard despite all of these challenges. I was an orphan and looking after my brothers, but I was the smartest student in my entire class. When the results came after writing national exams, everyone knew it was me who had the highest score.
We struggled through the next three years, and I graduated from primary school to grade 8. Now the results are out, but I don’t know who is going to support me because after grade 8, school is not free. I was visiting an Aunt asking if she could support me with school, and she said she is not capable of doing that. But she knew somewhere where I could get help. She said there is an orphanage that could help me with my education. I had to plan to go to meet those who were running the orphanage. It was called Littlefield home - named after the founders’ father, David Littlefield, a well loved science educator in Camden. Established by Janet Littlefield who graduated from Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro.
I went there three times but was not able to meet the people who ran it. It was a six hour walk each way, to get to the orphanage. The third time I finally met this guy, and I showed him my exam results. He said, Oh yes, we can support you. Because I was selected to go to a government high school, which is a day school. At that time, tuition was around 1500 Malawi Kwacha which was equivalent to US $5 in 2008. I started my journey in high school, but it was still a challenging life because I was living in poverty and had to travel from home to school, a 30 minute walk each way. Even on holidays, I had to walk and report in, but this process showed my determination, responsibility and intelligence which helped me receive sponsorship for my high school education which was a boarding school situation.
At the boarding school, which was closer to my home, there were still a lot of challenges like sometimes no electricity, no library, no computers, and extremely limited access to learning. Also I was bullied for a whole year before I could finally afford a school uniform because I had been given a female goat and was able to sell the offspring to purchase my uniform. The director of the orphanage, who I had finally met after a whole year, suggested I go to a better school. So finally at a new school, I sat my final high school exams and I did very well. I waited to go to college. To get support to go to college, I had to do volunteer work. The Littlefield home had transformed into the non-profit Go! Malawi to concentrate on providing educational support. I was working as an assistant director for the Go! Malawi programs discovering deserving students, recording and balancing finances, and convening meetings with committee members of the villages and the community in general.
A year had passed, and I went to college to study electrical engineering. During holidays I was also working as a volunteer to keep supporting Go! Malawi. During this period, I met the volunteers coming from the United States and we worked together on several programs. I had one year to go to finish my degree program, which is when I met Rob Phifer. We worked together on several projects of teaching, tree planting, and educating community members, students, and teachers on the value of taking care of the environment. With the determination and interest from Rob, we convinced many schools from many areas even far away, to engage in our tree planting project in a section of the rainforest that was damaged. It was pouring rain the entire time, but everyone worked and we planted about 5000 seedlings! The seedlings had been grown in Malawi, started by Rob and myself until the special day that they were all big enough to be planted out.
Before 2016 Go! Malawi needed someone to work as a Director. Rob insisted it should be someone from Malawi. He encouraged me to take the job. Additionally, we also created a means for families to have sustainable charcoal for cooking and building materials by growing bamboo. Prior to 2016 people were going into the rainforest and illegally harvesting trees for charcoal. That was stripping the rainforest of its natural strength and causing erosion and water problems. Rob said he would do fundraising through many of his friends in the US in order to distribute sustainable bamboo for charcoal to communities. Due to limited funds, only several villages were able to receive the bamboo. But these villages with bamboo proved Rob’s theory that it would stop people from stripping the rainforest of its trees. And because of this success, we need to expand Rob’s legacy project of more bamboo to more villages and even to individual families through this new foundation that I am starting called the Bright Pathways Project – especially since Go! Malawi no longer exists.
We can achieve a greener involvement through the bamboo and tree planting programs, with basic needs costs covered by the sale of goat offspring. This ‘goat’ money will for example cover the costs outside of tuition like books, school uniforms, soap for bathing and laundry, shoes, and school materials like notebooks and pencils. For each deserving student, your donation of $75 will provide one goat, ten tree seedlings, and ten bamboo seedlings which in turn is an amazing opportunity to improve the students lives as well as their communities. The Bright Futures Program is more necessary than ever – especially because of the recent cuts to USAID.
So it is through this educational project that we will provide tree seedlings, bamboo, and one goat that we give a scholarship and responsibility to an individual deserving student to care for these things. The goat is an example of sustainable agriculture whose offspring will help support their education costs other than tuition, because there are always costs to education other than just the tuition. These three things, seedlings, bamboo and a goat, combined will help foster sustainability, conservation, responsibility, caring, stability for their families and communities, and education. The Bright Pathways Project with your support will increase opportunities for secondary school attendance as well as college studies. This will in turn improve all the communities and our futures.
Additional support is also required for the tuition of each College Student or Secondary School Student which is the majority of our annual budget.
These students have been selected to go on to government schools because of their excellent grades and sense of responsibility.
For example, each college student requires $1000 for tuition per year.
And each secondary school student requires $600 for tuition per year.
Your donation support can make a vast difference in these lives and communities.
My Bright Pathways Project plan is to see improvement and impact of students and communities over a period of four years – the time necessary for a secondary or college education.
For more information, or to make a donation to the Bright Pathways Project,
contact [email protected]