Five Pillars
FIVE PILLARS OF MIQLAT
Our child sponsorship program is built on five pillars, each of which represents a core area in the life of any child in Malawi. Life-giving nutrition, excellent health care, successful agricultural practices, quality education, and meaningful discipleship training can change the face of an entire village.
NUTRITION
Fostering Christ-loving, problem solving adults starts with growing healthy bodies, which begins by consuming the right nutritional building blocks. Sponsorship through Miqlat provides each child with a well-balanced midday meal of locally grown food, and food relief for families in times of natural disaster or extreme economic hardship. As part of our attention to holistic health, children identified to be HIV positive receive an extra meal to take home each day, as their bodies require additional support to maintain good health.
Recently, with the opening of the Miqlat School, we have added an extra meal to our daily fare, providing the enriched porridge that many of our children were receiving for breakfast at their government schools. Our teachers have reported that eating this breakfast makes a noticeable difference in the attention, energy, and thinking capacity of the children day-to-day.
HEALTH CARE
Being fed well is the beginning of optimal health, but all of us encounter sickness and injury even in the best of circumstances. Living in a hotbed of Malaria, HIV, and other neglected preventable diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, our children face an even greater chance of succumbing to health problems without intentional help. Miqlat sponsorship covers all the health costs of our children, from testing and treating frequent incidences of malaria and bandaging soccer-acquired scrapes and bruises to finding doctors and programs to help our children with physical and mental disabilities. In an additional avenue of promoting community health, Miqlat also drills protected bore holes throughout the villages we serve to create access to clean and safe water for our children and their neighbors.
AGRICULTURE: FOUNDATIONS FOR FARMING
64% of Malawi’s population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. Most of this number is made up of rural families farming their own land for food that they will personally consume throughout the year. Through extensive training in the “Foundations for Farming” program, Miqlat offers our children access to improved agricultural practices which produce higher yields and more sustainable crops for families and communities alike. The gardens at each Center function as a model of the Foundations for Farming method for the surrounding villages and provide a hands-on learning environment for our children’s agricultural education.
EDUCATION
It is estimated that 10% of children in Malawi fail to attend any school and only 35% of students who do enroll actually succeed in completing even 8 grades. Further, according to the 2015-2016 Malawi Health and Demographic Survey, only 36% of adult men and 26% of adult women in the country have received a high school education. Miqlat sponsorship provides government mandated uniforms and school supplies, as well as tutoring at all educational levels. Additionally, we pay school fees for high school and college level education to help increase opportunities for our students when they graduate from our program. Even so, over the years, Miqlat has been disappointed with the education our students have received under the care of overworked and under-resourced local schools and have thus embarked on an exciting new project: Miqlat Elementary Schools located at each Hope Center.
Read more about our School Project Here.
DISCIPLESHIP
Meeting the physical and intellectual needs of our children is a major step in creating world changers, and a step that we believe Christ’s teaching asks of us. However, the greatest and most important gift we can give to the children of Malawi is a flourishing relationship with Jesus. After serving lunch each day, Miqlat Hope Centers alternate hosted activities. Three days a week, these activities focus on discipleship training, incorporating large group Bible teaching, small group conversations, and intercessory prayer and worship. Empowering our children to change their communities and their country begins with connecting them to the truth of their identity as seen by God: they are beloved, wanted, powerful, capable, and called people, who have a Father who promises to bring them through all difficulty and hardship and who has created them for good work.