Thanks for supporting the McConnell International Foundation's Keep Girls in School team for the Edinburgh Kiltwalk 2025.

Every pound our team raises goes to replenish our Keep Girls in School fund which supports 200 girls in rural Malawi through all four years of secondary school. We recruit new scholars as the older girls pass their certificate exams and move on.

Last year, Saina one of our scholars (pictured here with her mother (L) won a coveted place at Mzuzu University to study nursing, the first in her family to finish secondary school, let alone enter higher education. Your support means that girls like Saina have an opportunity to fulfil their full potential.

For the academic year 2024-25, which started on last September, there are 200 girls in the programme, at 8 schools in 4 districts.

UNICEF Malawi research shows that the child marriage rate for girls is 50 per cent and the teen pregnancy rate is 29 per cent, one of the highest in Southern Africa. Of the girls lucky enough to get to secondary school, 9.5 per cent will drop out because of pregnancy.

In 2024 the drop-out rate for our programme was only 1 per cent with one girl leaving school because of pregnancy. We are hopeful that she can return to school as soon as possible.