Lebanon, Indiana … Almost from the inception of the Redwood Montessori School in Lebanon, Indiana, the staff has instilled a message of serving others in the lives of the students. The school is housed at the meeting place of the Lebanon Church of Christ, and this congregation is also involved in supporting the work of the Malawi Project in Central Africa. This includes getting books and other school supplies to Malawi schools. Thus, it was an easy choice for Karen Swan, the school administrator, and her staff, to incorporate Malawi in the school’s outreach programs.
Over the past year, the children in the school have seen pictures and heard stories about the poverty in Malawi, and the difficulty for schools to obtain textbooks for their children. Few schools in Malawi have a library and many teachers, especially in the rural areas, have only one of two textbooks with which to teach hundreds of students.
Because of Malawi’s former ties to Great Britain, the country’s official language is English. This gives supporters an easy way to send schoolbooks to Malawi schools. Over the years, with assistance from across the U.S. the Malawi Project and its sister organization, Action for Progress, have put school supplies in over 1,000 schools in Malawi.
Schools in the Boone County school system recently donated another large number of schoolbooks that were no longer needed. The older students at Montessori are participating in helping Malawi’s school children by meeting at the Project’s warehouse site one day a month and preparing the books for shipment to Malawi.
An especially touching story about the value and importance of school books appeared on the Malawi Project website in July 2023: https://www.malawiproject.org/shortage-of-school-books/
Pictured are 5 of the older students at the Redwood school who are participating in the preparation of schoolbooks for Malawi.