One family’s fight for hope and education in Malawi

Elise is a student at Chilangoma Primary School in Malawi. The rural village where she lives with her family is a 20-minute walk from the school – and despite being only 10km from the city of Blantyre, it’s worlds away in terms of development. The family home has no electricity or running water, and no kitchen except an outside stove.  

Elise lives with her parents, Asiyatu and Joseph, her brother Sadik (10) and her sister Tiyankhulenji (Tiya) (8), who were both born with disabilities.

The impact of drought and extreme weather on vulnerable communities  

When we first met Elise and her family, they were recovering from the disastrous effects of Cyclone Freddy – the third deadliest tropical cyclone recorded in the southern hemisphere, which caused catastrophic flash-flooding and widespread damage to homes, farmland and vital infrastructure. More than 1,200 people lost their lives as a result.  

Freddy wasn’t the only catastrophe to hit the country that year. Malawi’s 2023/2024 rainfall season was ravaged by El Niño driven drought that destroyed the food crops of over a million households across the country and, forcing the president to declare a State of Disaster in 23 of 28 districts in early 2024.  

Elise’s family’s crops – mainly maize and casava – were washed away by the cyclone, leaving them with very little to harvest, nothing to sell to buy food over the hungry months, and no seeds and fertilizer for planting the next year’s crops. With rising prices and a lack of food during the drought, the family’s circumstances have become even more fragile.  

Food insecurity is driving hunger and malnutrition  

Theirs is an experience reflected across the country as almost 5.7 million people (28% of the analyzed population) are thought to be facing “Crisis” levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3) or worse. In fact, 416,000 people expected to be facing “Emergency” levels (IPC Phase 4 – one level below Famine), and up to 40% of the population has been “impacted by El Niño conditions”.  

Food insecurity is particularly severe among children and malnutrition rates are increasing as families struggle to afford staple foods like maize. Women, especially those in rural areas, bear the brunt of economic hardships as they often shoulder the responsibility of feeding their families.  

The impact of recent natural disasters has been compounded by rising global costs affecting the price of basic foods. In November 2024, food inflation in Malawi was 33.7%. Other costs associated with food production, such as fuel, seeds and fertilizer, have also increased. And the effects of fuel shortages have trickled down into food supply chains, transportation and healthcare access, deepening economic inequality and compounding the vulnerabilities of already marginalized populations.  

Drought has led to poor harvests and a lack of food  

During our most recent visit, we found Elise at school. Despite being a hard-worker, the 14- year-old’s home life has taken a toll, and she failed her Primary School Leaving Certificate of Education (PLCE) exams in 2023. She can’t progress to secondary school without them.  

At home, Elise’s mother, Asiyatu, brought us up to speed: “We have managed to survive but it has not been easy. Our only source of income is doing piecework in fields around our village, but that has not been enough to cover us for the produce we lost in the 2023 drought. We even planted a vegetable garden to help with the relish but, with the dry spell, all the vegetables are now dry.”  

Elise’s family normally survives on around six 50kg bags of maize per year, but because of low rainfall, in June 2024 the family only harvested around half a bag. Joseph says: “We are struggling to feed our family, but we will also not have enough money to buy fertilizer for our crops this year.”  

School feeding provides a lifeline in Malawi 

The family's only consolation is that all three children are now going to school where Mary’s Meals provides each of them with a nutritious daily meal. There, immersed in learning and play, all three children can hold onto hope for a brighter future despite their struggles.  

“We are doing our best to support Elise as she is preparing to sit for the 2025 PLCE test that would qualify her to go to secondary school. We found a bit of money from the piecework that enabled us to pay for her tuition and examination fees,” Asiyatu beams. “We dream of her going very far with her education because if she succeeds, our whole family will succeed.” 

Such is the belief in the power of education, and the essential life-changing value of Mary’s Meals.  

It costs just $25.20 to provide a child with school meals for an entire school year. Mary’s Meals is currently serving nutritious daily meals to more than 1.5 million children in schools across Southern Africa. Now, more than ever, your support is needed to spread the word about our work and the emergency in the region. With your support, we can reach hundreds of thousands more children waiting for our daily meals