Namulenga Resource Center which was built by Malawi Together with St. Bernadette at Namulenga Girls Primary School in Mulanje, is now offering vocational skills with an aim of imparting children with disabilities around the community with various skills.
Funny Nambesa, special needs teacher at the resource center explains that the resource started in 2007 with a certain teacher called Mary Matola.
According to Nambesa, Matola introduced project because she was trained as a special needs teacher to teach those with any disability for example those who are physically challenged, mentally challenged and those with speaking problems.
“The resource center is growing comparing to the past years before the visit of our partner St. Bernadette’s in Scotland who helped us with the building which you are seeing today and also the singer machine which we use to train the matured students how to sew.” Nambesa said
According to her the vocation training is given to selected students because they do not have enough funding to support all the students which they train since the beginning of the resource center.
“Although I am saying that the resource is growing but we have a problem of low turn up of learners because of weather conditions, and also some parents are not willing to send their children to school because of negligence”.
Bornface Mchekeni, tailoring and designing teacher expressed concern that his work becomes tougher sometimes because the resource has only one sewing machine which sometimes becomes difficult during lessons.
“The problem is that my students want to be paid because they think that we are just using them to sew for nothing not knowing that we are investing a skill in them which they will use to depend on in future, you know teaching these students is very different from the normal ones,” he urged
