Thanks for your support!

Mai Aisha is a home for 225 orphaned children in Lilongwe, Malawi. One senses immediately that this is a special place. One sees children in classrooms; children at play; children reading books, drawing, writing their lessons. Teachers and staff are cheerful and welcoming. This is a good place.

Mai Aisha achieves all of this on a tight budget. Every penny counts. Budget priorities are, of course, food, clothing, health care, and school supplies, but another item, a seemingly innocuous item, was monopolizing precious cash: the steep rise in the price of firewood. Firewood? Yes, to cook meals for all those wonderful kids.

Ninety percent of the people in Malawi rely on firewood or charcoal to cook on inefficient open-fire cookstoves. Because the demand for firewood is devastating Malawian forests at an alarming and unsustainable rate, firewood prices have skyrocketed. All that firewood, as you know, releases massive amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere. For Malawi, for Mai Aisha, for the climate, this has to stop.

Thank you for deciding to help. With your generous support, this project is providing more and more institutions with improved cookstoves all across Malawi. At Mai Aisha, the new cookstove has cut firewood use by almost half, and the savings go directly to the things that count, the things that make this such a special and happy place.

There is nothing so gratifying and endearing as the sound of children’s voices calling out in happy unison. Do you hear it? It’s the sound of those 225 children at Mai Aisha saying, to you, “Thank you!”