Welcome to Melissa and Jeremy’s Goods for Good Blog! For those of you who don’t know us, I’m the Founder and Executive Director of Goods for Good and Jeremy is the organization’s CFO and my husband. Over the next 6 months we will be working together to expand Goods for Good’s work. Goods for Good identifies and collects surplus goods for targeted distribution to vulnerable children in the developing world. (Visit the Goods for Good website if you want to learn more about the organization. www.goodsforgoodinternational.org).
Jeremy and I are going to be working and living at an orphan care center near Mvera Malawi, a rural town 40 minutes away from the Capital, Lilongwe. There are two main focus areas of our work. The first is teaching and general volunteering at the orphan care center, St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Centre or more commonly known as Chezi. The second piece of our work is local partnership research and infrastructure development.
Chezi is an orphan care center founded over 25 years ago. Chezi began as a feeding center for malnourished children and their mothers and has evolved into an orphanage and community center for vulnerable children and their families. Chezi is home to 120 orphans and serves as a community center for hundreds other orphans and vulnerable children. Chezi still runs a feeding program for malnourished children as well as a health clinic, serving the entire community. Additionally, Chezi provides extra support to the local public school as well as services for the elderly and disabled. Chezi is at the center of community life and is well integrated into its tribal and cultural surroundings.
A couple of days a week, Jeremy and I will be teaching English and mathematics at the local school supported by Chezi as well as assisting with general educational activities at the orphan care center. Additionally, two friends of ours, Melissa Benton and Leora Klein, both school teachers in the United States, will be visiting Malawi for three weeks beginning in mid-July to assist with teacher training and program development.
In addition to our work at Chezi we will also be researching new programs for Goods for Good. We are focused on partnering with community based childcare centers which are locally run centers for orphans and vulnerable children in the community.
There is much more to come on our work and hopefully some play in Malawi so please do keep checking for updates, the next entry will be from Malawi!
Also many people have asked for Chezi’s Address:
St Mary’s Rehabilitation Centre
Lilongwe Diocese
P.O. Box 33
Mvera, Malawi, Central Africa
Best,
Melissa and Jeremy
About Us:
- The Goods for Good Team
- Goods for Good turns excess into progress. We collect surplus goods for targeted distribution to vulnerable children in Africa. Through partnerships with companies in the United States and caregivers in Africa, we are able to provide much needed school supplies, clothing and health and hygiene products to children in crisis, while at the same time reducing waste at home. Goods for Good is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization Visit our website at www.goods4good.org to learn more about our work.
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