I´m standing at the front of a classroom packed with young Malawians, 2 to a desk, in their first year of Secondary School. It’s a boarding school with boys from all around the country. They are all looking at me, probably expecting that I know how to teach. I´ll not let on. I´m filling time, wondering where on earth the teacher is that I´m supposed to be observing. I guess he´s not coming. Its late 2004, and what I am unaware of is that Bright Sparks is about to begin.
I am looking down at the 60+ names on the list of students I am supposed to be teaching, wondering why some of them aren´t here. Especially a couple of really bright ones, I can see their incredible exam results on the tattered dusty piece of paper I´ve been given.
“They´re not here sir, they´ve been sent home, they´re not coming back”.
A few days later I get a letter, hand delivered to my little mud brick home in the teachers housing area. It’s one of my students asking for help to pay his school fees so he doesn´t get sent home too. What do I do? I am living on a shoestring in Africa. Its bugging me that these bright young boys aren´t getting the chances I got. Just the chance to enjoy school and see what you can make of yourself. The first spark was ignited.
Set off to see the headmaster. Find out just how little fees are for a great education here, at one of the best national schools in the country. Email friends. Money coming in. Add it up, realize we can pay for 8 students. Back to the headmaster. Exam performance rankings in one hand, bursar´s list of missed fee payments in the other. Pick the brightest. Messages go out to the boys, some still in school, some back home in their village. Gather the boys, tell them friends from afar are going to pay their school fees. Huge smiles. Then tell them these new friends won´t leave them until they graduate from secondary school. Unforgettable moments. Write a contract, get the head and the students to sign it. Ask an Australian teacher to check the boys are not sent home once I´m gone. Bright Sparks is born.
Planning Bright Sparks Trust
10 years later to the day, I return to Malawi for the third time. As I exit the airport, a Doctor and Chartered Accountant are running towards me and embrace me and don´t let go. One of these young men was one of the boys who had been sent home back in 2004, a full orphan, no hope left. The other had been looking at me 10 years ago thinking I knew how to teach. They had come from the toughest corners of one of the poorest countries in the world, and here they were, professional and fine young men with a bright future. We left the airport together, the Bright Sparks Malawi Management Team. In the next 3 weeks we developed and signed Memorandums of Understanding with 3 of the best national schools in the country, we designed a process to identify the brightest children from the poorest backgrounds, we interviewed and selected 13 new Bright Sparks, we wrote our Operations Manual, we developed and signed Student Contracts so the students knew what support they had and what effort and performance we expected. We sat around camp fires under Baobab trees and agreed how this would work. We would work as volunteers. Our thanks to those that had provided us each with our education was to work to give others the opportunity we had enjoyed. We would focus on the neediest and the brightest. We spent many days and nights at Patrick´s village. I saw the changes that had happened as a result of Patrick´s career success. I saw the fertilizer stocks, the surplus foodstuffs, the old grass roofs replaced with shiny metal ones. We dreamed of how many children Bright Sparks could help, the many new friends we would find to support our cause, and the better Malawi that would come from having Bright Sparks in positions of influence in the future. It had taken us a decade, Bright Sparks was finally ready to grow.
Alastair Child - Founder and Director, Bright Sparks Trust