Maize Mill

The majority of the funds that we raised from our Launch Event in March 2011 are now being spent on the purchase of a maize mill. Work has started on the construction of a building that will house the maize mill and everything is expected to be in place for the maize mill operations to start in December 2011. When the maize mill is up and running, it will mean several very beneficial things both for the ARK and the local community.

Employment will of course be provided in the construction work, and then four new jobs will be created once the maize mill is fully functional. For two of those jobs the ARK will try to employ widows who have children to support, and don't have others means of surviving.

The ARK in Malawi researched the best place to situate the maize mill and it is now being built in a place called Chisu, which is about 15 km from Nkhata Bay town ship. The people of that area have been facing economic problems for a long time. What having a maize mill in their area means (as well as the employment) is that they no longer have to walk a long way to the township for the maize mill and very importantly they don’t have to send their children to town to get the maize, which of course means the children will no longer miss classes at school.

Other pluses on a similar note is that some people travel by small boat to the existing maize mill because it is near Lake Malawi, and when the weather has been bad accidents have happened and some people have died.

And finally, when the maize mill is fully operational it means that the ARK Malawi will have achieved a very remarkable level of self-sufficiency. For some time they have been increasingly able to play a very large part in the funding of each project and for the maize mill, they have been able to fully fund the construction of the maize mill, they have bought the land where it will be situated and they have paid the land registry fees to the government. And none of these payments are small ones.

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