Charity Update

One of the main charities that St Giles International supports is Expand. The charity is is a UK organisation that aims to help facilitate education for people in poor communities across the globe. Currently their country of operation is Malawi, and money raised by students and staff at St Giles has helped particularly towards the development of their school in Chisala.

This year money raised by St Giles has been used by Expand this to invest in a car for the charity. Tanya Clarke, the managing director of the charity, sent us this message about the car:

Expand’s new donated car is a beautiful red Toyota Hilux double cabin and, although its second hand, it’s in very good nick. It will make a big difference to the general running of Expand as we use our business car to do charity work and it’s not always available. Most importantly, it will help transport building supplies and goods for various projects and also help volunteers with access. Our project sites really are very remote and it would help them be much more independent.

Our motto is sustainability and our car will have running costs that will have to be met by the charity. Therefore, we will charge a hire fee for volunteers (that aren’t St Giles!) and  they will sign a disclaimer form with rules and regulations for use. This at least will back us up as much as possible. The car will be left at the Tea Estate if not in use and they have kindly offered to keep it safe and secure, as well as service it for us at their mechanical workshop. This means it will have a local caretaker and we won’t waste fuel going to town and back for services. The car will be used for school activities and trips subject to prior consent but transport is a very delicate subject in Africa and is often abused. We do not want an accident due to neglect and will therefore choose the car’s outings carefully.

Thank you so much St Giles, this will really make such a difference to a small charity like Expand.

We recently also donated old text books from our school to the charity, which were well received. The books were distributed between Chisala and Chikangawa secondary schools.

This summer, the St Giles Educational Trust is delighted to be paying for two volunteer teachers from St Giles to go out to Malawi and teach English as a foreign language to 40 teachers from 6 schools in the area. They will spend a month there each and will cover teaching techniques, grammar, phonetics and using resources in the classroom.

All the St Giles centres have regular fundraising events for students and staff to take part in, to have fun as well as raise money for charities like Expand. So if you come and study with us, make sure to join in! Next week, our London Central centre is holding a Diamond Jubilee International Food Party! Students and staff will be making lovely food from their countries and selling it for charity in the Square at 10.45 on Friday the 1st June. Last year the international food party raised a fantastic £1813.50 for charity – so if you are studying with us right now make sure to come along and help us beat that this year!