Solution - Employment

Employment gives you self-respect because you are able to feed and provide for your own family. 

Apart from the school staff, there are three other areas where Joyce and ALMs train and employ parents, carers and local families.

In addition, other local people are preferentially employed during any construction activity.

Entrepreneurship Training

This is run by Joyce, who in earlier times was employed by the national government to do this.

The parents and carers of the children are trained and then given a small amount of start-up capital to establish little business.

An example is Mrs. M who is 50 years old and a caregiver to her nephew JL, 14 years old and his sister EL 8 years old.

“My late husband was very sick with cancer and I have nine children of my own. My friend who knew about the school encouraged me to enrol JL there. After my husband's funeral, I participated in their Entrepreneurship training. After I completed the course, I was given some money. I started a small business of selling vegetables at the market. My business has grown. Now I also buy and sell boxes of tomatoes. I'm proud of JL who is very sharp and now is in Grade 10.”

Farming

Was the first ALMs initiative in self-sustainability and provides employment to local people.

Run by the manager, Andrew Phiri on 4 hectare acquired by ALMs. The farm provides food for the school with any extra being sold at the market.

Maize and vegetables are the main crops.

There is a  piggery with 60+ pigs and there are also cattle.

These provide high quality protein for the children with excess being sold.

The pigs and cattle are sold to the local butchers.

During the last dry season, electricity supply was erratic.

Our butchers couldn’t rely on supply to keep their cold rooms running so sales decreased.

We expect any normalisation to be adversely affected by Covid-19 and increased unemployment.

Concrete Brick Making

Also run by Andrew Phiri is  concrete brick manufacture.

This is another ALMs initiative in self-sustainability and providing local employment.

The brick manufacturing not only provided bricks for our own building construction, but concrete bricks are sold to local builders.

An additional benefit is employment and training of local people.