Malawi Early Literacy Team
Malawi Early Literacy Team, Inc is a 501(c)3 non-profit (EIN 99-1183835) supporting MELT Malawi CBO in Mzuzu, Malawi. MELT is comprised of a group of education and business professionals with a passion for young children and the doors that can be opened for those children through literacy. It is our mission to equip the children in the Northern Region of Malawi, Africa with up to date, culturally appropriate early literacy materials and readers. The readers we publish are about Malawi village daily life, science and culture, and basic health concepts.
We provide multiple teacher workshops each year for the teachers in the twenty schools that we serve. These workshops are held at the MELT Central Library in Mzuzu, Malawi along with our library of over 40 titles and additional learning materials. These titles and other materials are transported to and from the schools with the MELT1 Mobile Library, a 2017 Toyota Land Cruiser.
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About MELT
How it all began Between 2008 and 2014, five short-term trips in Northern Malawi focused on training primary teachers to teach early reading. Although the Malawian teachers were knowledgeable, grateful and enthusiastic learners, the US teachers were dismayed by the severe lack of curriculum materials and early reading books in Malawi.
This led to the 2012 - 2014 Keys to Education trips that brought learning materials and created the first MELT readers: The ABCs of Malawi and The ABCs of Africa. A seed was planted!
The Next Step A three-person team (Margot McGorman, the late Mike Miller, and Heather White) traveled to Malawi in April 2015 to meet with government education officials and Malawian teachers who had participated in the training program. This visit confirmed the ongoing need for early literacy readers, teacher training, and supplemental classroom literacy materials.
Heather White began the process of creating a US team of educators and business professionals to develop what would become the Malawi Early Literacy Team with the first official meeting happening December of 2015.
Now: MELT The MELT Board was formed during that first meeting in December of 2015 to continue these early literacy efforts in Malawi. MELT has commited to a literacy project in the Northern Region of Malawi which:
- Develops and publishes K-2 early literacy readers.
- Provides an alphabet fluency kit for each teacher in the MELT program.
- Purchased a Land Cruiser, MELT1, for use as a bookmobile.
- Provides teacher instruction in early reading practices.
- Uses teacher workshops as a collaboration of ideas for creating new titles and materials.
- Hired a Malawian Field Director, Sam Chirwa, to manage the bookmobile service year round.
- Hired two Malawian teachers to act as Resource Teachers providing guidance to the Malawian teachers.
- Built a library to store and distribute MELT books and materials.
Our Services
MEarly Literacy Publications MELT is committed to providing culturally appropriate early readers. These readers will be about Malawian children for Malawian children. Research shows that when children are learning to read, they are more successful when the pictures are familiar to them. In a country where most homes do not have electricity, a picture depicting 'V is for vacuum' is not effective. The book collection includes readers written about Malawi daily life, Malawi science and culture, and important basic health and safety concepts.
ETeacher Workshops The MELT program includes ongoing early literacy training for primary teachers in Northern Malawi. All teachers will receive an alphabet literacy kit, teachers' edition manuals and classroom training in the best practices with these materials. We will continue to provide teacher training workshops as we publish additional early literacy materials. This will ensure that children receive high quality instruction as they learn to read. These workshops are as much a learning experience for the US team as they are for the Malawian team. The Malawian teachers are able to share their successes and challenges and provide invaluable direction for future publications and leaning materials.
LMELT1 Mobile Library Our purchase of the Land Cruiser allows Sam, MELT Field Director, to transport materials to and from teachers in rural schools. Most of our village schools are located in the bush, over very rough terrain, making access quite difficult. The MELT1 Book Mobile allows these remote schools to share a large pool of early literacy materials to teach young children how to read. Teachers check-in and check-out bins of 100 titles each time Sam visits their schools.
TMELT Central Library Located in Mzuzu, Malawi, the MELT Central Library houses the nearly 50 MELT titles, literacy materials and is the meeting place for MELT Teacher Workshops. The library was built through the early 2020's as a result of the destruction of the previous, rented MELT space in 2019. We decided we needed to purchase the land and build a structure that would be owned by MELT. Since the grand opening in 2022, the space has hosted multiple teacher workshops, many of them organized and attended by the Malawian teachers.
