Lilongwe-Umodzi Lions Club pledges bursaries to visually-impaired students

Malawi: The Lilongwe-Umodzi Lions Club has pledged to provide bursaries to students from Lilongwe's Malingunde School for the visually impaired who have been selected to pursue secondary education in the country's public secondary schools.

Nkhafwire Mkandawire, President of the Lilongwe-Umodzi Lions Club, stated that the development is intended to assist students at Malingunde School for the Blind in completing their secondary education.

“We were told that students at Malingunde School for the Blind are very bright but they fail to go further with secondary education due to lack of school fees, hence from this year as a club we will start supporting students from this school who have been selected to continue their education in public secondary schools,” Mkandawire said.

“We will be supporting them with not just school fees but also upkeep, transport money and everything, as a club we believe that one way of empowering children with a number of challenges is to make sure that they find skills through education.”

He went on to say that one of his club's pillars is to help communities with what they need, which includes promoting education among children.

“We serve communities with whatever we earn and that is one of our motivating factors, in addition, we are centred on promoting education among children, we believe that if we want to move as a nation we need to ensure that we educate the younger ones,” he said.

Recently, the Lilongwe-Umodzi Lions Club visited the students at Malingunde School for the Blind and donated various items worth over K600,000, including maize, clothes, soya pieces, cooking oil, sugar, and soap, as one way of easing the challenges that students face at the school.

In his remarks, Huxley Tundulu, Head-teacher of Malingunde School for the Blind, praised the Lilongwe-Umodzi Lions Club for pledging to start providing bursaries to students selected to continue secondary education.

“The pledge of bursaries which the Lions Club has made is quite critical as it will assist our students to go further with their education and become self-reliant in future,” Tundulu said.