On assignment for UNICEF, photojournalist Thoko Chikondi returned to her alma mater, Bandawe Girls’ Secondary School in Malawi’s Nkhata Bay district, to see how scholarships from the K.I.N.D. (Kids in Need of Desks) Fund are helping students expand their horizons.
Girls who dream of graduating from high school in Malawi face an uphill battle: there is no free secondary education in Malawi and the girls’ graduation rate is less than half the boys’ graduation rate. Many families can’t afford to send their children to school beyond the free primary grades; if they can only pay the expenses for one child, sons often take precedence.
The K.I.N.D. (Kids in Need of Desks) Fund, a partnership between UNICEF and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, has been working to improve education outcomes for children in Malawi since 2010. By delivering desks to classrooms across the country and awarding four-year high school scholarships for girls, K.I.N.D. is helping dreams come true.
Sixty girls currently attend Bandawe Girls’ Secondary School with support from the K.I.N.D. Fund scholarship program. Located near Lake Malawi, the boarding school has about 500 students and a very high pass rate on national secondary school examinations — 98 percent. Many graduates go on to study at universities in Malawi.
One of those graduates is photojournalist Thoko Chikondi, who returned to Bandawe on assignment in October. A member of the class of 2005, Chikondi attended with support from a church scholarship fund. “This was my dream school. Because I used to see girls from this school,” she says. “I particularly fell in love with the uniform. I felt like it could be me one day.”
In a segment of MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” that aired on Dec. 19, 2024, Chikondi describes how it felt to meet young students today, and how her own high school scholarship was the springboard that led her to study at the University of Malawi, and introduced her to the idea of a career in photojournalism.
“When I came here, I didn’t know what I wanted to become,” Chikondi says. “But when I was in Form 1, there were visitors from the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. They interviewed us on a youth program on Radio One. And on that day, I said ‘I want to be a journalist.’
“To come back to photograph the same [classroom] that I sat in, when I just dreamed of being a journalist, and doing that work in that school in the same spaces, to me it’s so much,” Chikondi continues. “And I hope for the same for the girls, that they will be able to come back here in the capacity as whoever they want to be … I just want to say thank you to UNICEF. I hope more people donate to this fund so that more girls’ dreams can come true.”
“When you talk about scholarships, I know exactly what it means,” Chikondi says. “I know exactly how it was a bridge to turn my dreams into reality. When I looked at the girls, it felt like me a few years ago. And whatever dreams they said they have, I believe they will achieve them. Because I was also the beneficiary of a scholarship.”
Bandawe is bigger now than it was when Chikondi attended. The classrooms are full of eager young students, raising their hands to answer teachers’ questions, comparing notes and studying together. They dream of becoming doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists and journalists.
“They are sending more girls to university than they did in my time, which is very encouraging and exciting,” says Chikondi. “I think with scholarships like the K.I.N.D. scholarship, there is a lot of hope and opportunity in this school for the girls that are the beneficiaries of the scholarships.
“It was very emotional for me to come back here, because it is a school that made my dreams come true.”
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