Village and our partners currently work in 10 countries implementing 23 educational aid and poverty-fighting development projects that have reached over 14,000 students.
Working in local, rural populations, we provide a library structure complete with solar panels, internet access, computers, a thousand books, and an educational lead that designs and runs programs specifically tailored to the local community. Our newest project (Kampala, Uganda) will serve 1600 students and provide tech training through our corporate partner, Caylent. This will provide an opportunity for many students to leave high school with job-ready skills they can utilize anywhere in the world.
Students at Biwi Primary School in Lilongwe, Malawi recently began a digital literacy course, created by their local librarian, Yewoh. She also runs a local book club and our signature mentoring program that brings students together with an adult mentor from a different country. These students have a library resource full of targeted programming, supported by parents and the community. Yewoh currently has a long waiting list of students who want to join programs. This is the case at most of VIllage’s locations.
At Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, feminine hygiene products stopped being distributed in 2022 due to funds being diverted to the Ukraine crisis. This left tens of thousands of girls and women without an essential resource. It Takes a Village recently distributed 300 hygiene kits to single mothers and teen girls. This allows these women to not only live with dignity but also to keep working and going to school. Without this essential service, girls miss school and young mothers miss work, opening them up to forced marriage, forced labor, and other forms of trafficking. We are working diligently to provide each of our female students with a life-saving kit.
