Glasgow schoolgirl’s trip to help poor children in rural Malawi

A Glasgow schoolgirl has travelled to Malawi to hand out clothes and blankets made in a Scottish factory.

Lauren Strain, an 18-year-old student from St Margaret’s High school, made her second trip to the African country after spending much of the last year fundraising.

Last year, pupils from St Margaret’s delivered blankets made by workers at the former Remploy factory in Wishaw.

Lauren’s trip was a return to the Mulanje region, a rural area near the border with Mozambique.

She hopes that she can help people in Scotland to gain an understanding of what life is like for people in these poverty-stricken areas.

She said: “I think the poverty in Malawi is definitely on a different scale to what we witness here.

“Everybody has hardships but I have never personally witnessed anything personally close to the hardships that we’ve seen in Malawi.”