Children of Dzaleka refugee camp
Here are featured just a few of the 150 kids in the community we support.
About the initiative
Every year, from about October, we begin a fundraising initiative to purchase toys for 150 children of various ages in Dzaleka refugee camp.
Can you see how excited these kids are for a few pieces of second hand clothing? You should see their faces light up when it comes time to distribute the toys on Christmas day.
The camp is home to about 50 000 people, I was once told by Dontien, my camp liason and an active community member, that half the camps population is made up of children. We would love to be able to provide toys to even more kids but the logistics make it a total nightmare. We can’t ship toys in…the toys available to us here with the money we are donated are of poor quality and expensive. It stings, handing out toys that you know will be broken in a week. Still, they are grateful and for a moment their world isn’t only poverty and struggle and discomfort. For a moment, they are simply children opening a christmas present.
How can I help?
As that time of year draws near, my days are filled with fundraising, sourcing wrapping materials, sorting gifts and clothes by age and sex…and thinking about more ways to appeal to the heart of the masses so that we can raise enough money to gift kids with toys that will last.
Shout out to the amazing people who have helped me fund raise for this project!
Kate Hartley Louis.
Could literally not have done 2025 without you. Mother, Manager, Wife, Humanitarian, Masters Student and all around woman extraordinaire. They don’t make em much more impressive than this.
Bev Lillian Spencer (aka…Mom)
Your fundraising efforts from the UK have blown me away and reinvigorated a spirit of goodwill within me. “Everything good that I have inside of me I have from you.”
MOVIE QUOTE anyone know where this is from?? Leave your comments below…
Angela Quashigah
What is there to be said about you that need not take an entire novels worth of pages? You put me to shame and make me want to be stronger, braver, more generous and grounded, because you model all that and more to degrees I have only ever witnessed in you. You showed me a world I stubbornly closed my eyes to. You opened the door that might yet lead me to salvation. You stayed a true and honest friend through my constant identity shifts.
Angels walk amongst us and some of them smoke and drink and are slightly unhinged but they do the good works with which they were tasked and God watches over them, through triumphs and trails.
How can I help?
If you live in Lilongwe, second hand toys are generally of far better quality than those we can afford to buy here. (We’d LOVE to be able to ship toys in from other countries but the shipping fees are crazy town…)
Also clothes, stationary, art supplies, books…paper. It is all needed and very much appreciated.
Cash donations are always welcome, airtel money and cash for those living in Malawi, an offshore account for those living abroad.
Are you able to support the project? Click here.
Got questions?
Feel free to reach out.
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