About Temwa
Bringing communities together to end poverty in northern Malawi
Temwa means “love”
Temwa works in Nkhata Bay North, on the remote northern shore of Lake Malawi – one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest countries in the world. Around 55,000 people live there, in mountainous country with very few roads. It is isolated enough that little government or NGO help reaches it at all.
Temwa has worked there since 2003. Not by arriving with a plan, but by asking communities what they need and helping them build it – farming, forestry, clean water, health, schooling – until they no longer need Temwa at all.
That is the whole idea: self-reliant communities that can transform their own futures.
Where we work
Nkhata Bay North
What families here are up against
- Nine in ten people are farmers. Almost 60% live on just over 50p a day.
- Four in five households have no clean water for drinking or washing.
- One in eight adults is HIV-positive, so nearly every household is affected.
- Some communities are a nine-hour walk from the nearest clinic.
- A quarter of the district’s forest has been lost in twenty years, bringing drought, flooding and failed harvests with it.
- Only 3% of women have finished secondary school.
These problems are not separate, so Temwa does not treat them separately. A family whose harvest fails cannot pay school fees; a child who misses school cannot escape the cycle. Temwa runs projects across all of it, often in the same village at the same time.
How it began
It started with one family
Lotti’s story
In 1999 two friends, Jo Hook and Sophie Guise, were running a backpackers’ lodge in Usisya, a remote town on the lakeshore. Their close friend and colleague, Lotti Nkhwazi, died after developing AIDS. He had had almost no access to healthcare. He had also been supporting his extended family – fifteen children – on his income alone.
Growing enough food to feed fifteen children is hard. Finding secondary school fees on top is close to impossible. His death changed the course of all their lives at once. The doctor at the Usisya health centre told Jo and Sophie that Lotti’s family was not unusual. It was ordinary.
They went home to the UK in 2000 and spent three years fundraising and working out how to help properly rather than briefly. Temwa launched as a charity in 2003, supporting a community of 2,000 people. It now works with around 55,000.
Founded 2003 · Registered charity no. 1185889What we do
Three things, at the same time, in the same villages
Farming and forests
Training in sustainable farming that stands up to drought and flood, business support so farmer groups can grow into forest-friendly enterprises, and tree planting to put back what deforestation has taken.
6,200 farmers trained · 1.6 million trees planted
Clean water and health
Ceramic water filters and hygiene education to stop waterborne disease, latrines each community can copy, and HIV testing, counselling and outreach clinics taken out to villages too remote to reach a hospital.
13,146 people reached with clean water · 35,900 HIV tests
Education
Community-run preschools, after-school reading camps, the Usisya community library, and bursaries for bright children from the poorest families – because primary school in Malawi is free and secondary school is not.
2,334 children’s literacy improved · 201 school bursariesOur impact
Twenty-three years, counted
Every one of those numbers began with a community deciding for itself what it needed. Temwa’s projects are designed and delivered by its Malawian team, alongside the people they serve – and they are built to end, leaving something that keeps working without us.
You can read the full detail in Temwa’s annual reports and impact reports.
Our patrons
People who lend us their name
- George MonbiotJournalist, author and environmentalist; a Guardian columnist and author of Feral and Regenesis.
- Grant “Daddy G” MarshallFounding member of Massive Attack. Has DJ’d at Temwa events and donated the profits from the sale of Banksy artwork.
- Dionne BennettWelsh-Jamaican artist and educator, co-founder of Tân Cerdd, and an advocate for Black music and culture.
- Laurie GreenlandBritish downhill mountain biker and former Junior World Champion, and a long-standing supporter of Temwa’s forestry work.
Every bid you place goes to this work
The artists in this catalogue donated their work free of charge. Temwa keeps the whole hammer price – and it goes straight to Nkhata Bay North.
Contact us
Temwa UK
27 Orchard Street
Bristol BS1 5EH
Call: +44 117 287 2892
Email: info@temwa.org
Visit: www.temwa.org
Temwa is a registered NGO in Malawi and a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1185889).