In October the Shizuoka-based private high school, ‘Shizuoka Futaba’, held their school festival – the Futaba-sai– during which Malawian coffee from the Warm Hearts Coffee Club was sold by the students to raise funds for Makapwa nursery in Malawi. In total the students and staff combined raising the equivalent of 33,000 school meals for Malawi- which is absolutely amazing and great news for the children of Malawi!

The students initially learned of Malawi through presentations delivered by Seibo Japan and once they were confident they could make a difference they set about doing so. The students were particularly interested in getting involved in fundraising for Makapwa Nursery. Thanks to their commitment to help we went ahead and gave our colleagues in Malawi the green light to start construction of a new nursery and at the time of writing the work is ongoing for which progress can be viewed here. As we come to the end of a very challenging year for Malawi we reflect once more on the amazing help of Japanese high schools like Shizuoka Futaba who by their efforts have changed the lives of children in one of the poorest countries in the world. We also look with hope to the new year and look forward to working more & more with the students & staff at Shizuoka Futaba- thank you all so much!