K.I.N.D. Fund Scholarships Change Lives in Malawi

Primary school is free in Malawi, but public high school comes with a price tag that's out of reach for many families. Many girls drop out of school to marry early; the boys' high school graduation rate is double the girls' graduation rate. Thirteen years ago, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell teamed up with UNICEF to launch the K.I.N.D. (Kids in Need of Desks) Fund, a partnership that provides desks for schoolchildren in Malawi and scholarships to help girls complete their secondary education.

Joyce Chisale, now a student at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in southern Malawi, attended St. Michael's Girls' Secondary School in Blantyre with support from a K.I.N.D. Fund scholarship. "It's been a nice journey knowing that I will be just learning, I'll be just studying, knowing that my fees and the books and the papers were being covered," she says. "So it was really amazing and all I did was just study hard."

In October, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell traveled to Malawi and met with a group of girls who are in college now, thanks to the support they received from the K.I.N.D. Fund. In an interview with O'Donnell, Joyce explained how the COVID-19 pandemic prompted her to change her focus to medical laboratory sciences. "I could see a lot of people dying, a lot of people without knowledge of what COVID is, so being in medical school really helped me understand how the COVID is operating, how it is mutating," Joyce said. 

In her first interview with O'Donnell years ago, when she was still in high school, Joyce described how she had been sent home for not wearing a uniform, before she received the scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition, uniforms, textbooks and other school expenses.

"The UNICEF scholarship really helped me throughout my secondary school because my father could not afford to pay for my fees as he was earning a low income and he also had to support my other siblings," says Joyce, the third of four children. Her merit-based K.I.N.D. scholarship also made it possible for her family to send her younger brother to high school and university. "I really don't take the support that was given to me for granted since it lifted my parents' burden," she says. 

Stories like Joyce's inspire younger girls to stay in school and follow their dreams as well. "I will study hard so that I, too, will become a doctor, and live a better life, just like this girl," says Jacqueline, a student at Mlonda Primary School in Malawi's Central Region. "Now that I have heard what Joyce did, I will surely do the same."

$185 funds a scholarship that supports one year of secondary education for a girl in Malawi, including tuition, boarding fees, textbooks, school uniform, school notebooks and writing materials and menstrual supplies. 

The K.I.N.D. Fund has raised more than $44 million to support children's education in Malawi. Your donation can help even more students get the most out of school, forging a path to a bright future. Please donate today.