I'm raising £2,000 for a community project

I am looking to raise £2,000 for a community project in Mulanje, Malawi.

I want to set up an enterprise to support local people, to be called “Mount Mulanje Makes”.

I visited Mulanje on holiday in 2024. It is a stunningly beautiful place with an enormous, free-standing, forest-clad mountain with verdant green tea plantations around its slopes. But the economy and people have recently been hit by cyclones and other climatic changes. I was lucky enough to be invited to a local's house where I learnt that they had recently lost their old house – no home insurance, no local assistance schemes... Malawi is the 5th poorest country in the world.

Every guidebook to Malawi features Mulanje, but the number of tourists is not huge, and you may go days without seeing a single one. Tourism is a way to bring money back into the Mulanje community, and getting each one to spend no more than what they might earn in a quarter an hour at home in the local economy will make a large difference.

The makers will be using locally-available African wax fabrics to make jewellery, key rings and bookmarks. These items are colourful, relatively cheap and also lightweight for tourists to buy and carry back as a reminder of their trip to Mount Mulanje.

The money raised will be used to get the project off the ground, and to provide the other necessary materials and packaging.

I am a textile artist, passionate about creativity and the power of making and communicating through art and design. As well as holidaying in Malawi, I also did an internship at “Tribal Textiles” in Mfuwe in neighbouring Zambia in 2025, picking up some insights into making crafts with local materials and some knowledge of how to sell to tourists, and one or two personal connections.

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