I will be going to Malawi in southern Africa in January 2016. My task is to join a the Malawian Ministry of Education as a VSO International volunteer on a school building programme. The aim is to build 53 schools in two years. But there is a twist, more of that later :)

My job will be as an Engineer and day to day, I anticipate I will be:

• Sourcing solar panels, zinc sheeting, cement etc. internationally and figuring out how to get them in country and out of customs.
• Learning Chechewa, the national language of Malawi but also spoken in parts of Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
  
• Utilising local labour and materials where possible, it is in everybody's interest.
  
• Travelling to & supervising construction, staying with local people in their villages as the schools are spread over a range of 1000km nationally.
• Transferring engineering knowledge, to the Malawian engineers I work with to magnify the impact of the project by building their capacity. They will be able to do my job when I am gone.
  
• Many other things I can't predict. Previous experience in Africa had me sent shopping for a goat, so..
  

In preparation for the move, I will be living on £1 a day for food and drink for 5 days! From 0:01 in the morning of Sunday 3rd January until the same time on Friday 8th January. Hopefully my experience will raise awareness of the lack of choice faced by 1.2 billion people who currently live below the extreme poverty line, and raise vital funds to combat it. Follow my progress on my public facebook page: facebook.com/nick.collins.568089

As an incentive to dig deep, I make the following promises!

For a donation of £15 I will include you in a thank you video, made in Malawi, that I hope you will like :)

For £25, I will bring you a special thank you gift back from Malawi (you can have some say in what it is too..)

For £50, I will make something very special for you in country. I have a few ideas but it will be a surprise. Depending on how many people feel this generous!

For those of you still reading! Below is more information on the project with a twist..

Thanks for your support.

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So here is the twist: In these schools there won't be ordinary classrooms. These classrooms will be special. Please take a minute to watch this video, it explains everything: oneclass - meet the classroom of the future from onebillion.

As you saw these schools will be equipped with tablets, powered by the sun, and that can teach children the entire maths curriculum from an app in there own language. This approach could be very useful in a country where classroom sizes of 100 are common and reported to have reached 230 in some places.

Using this new method, research shows children's education leaping forward by 18 months in just 6 weeks. All being well, the plan is to roll these oneclass classrooms out across the 5300 schools nationally. You can try these apps yourself, for free, at https://onebillion.org/apps.

I have been asked to raise £985 for VSO International, the organisation that has worked hard to find me and thousands others like me to volunteer. This includes getting me work permits, visas, paying for vaccinations, criminal records check, providing medical insurance and emergency evacuation, giving training in the UK and internationally and providing support to me at every step of the way.

This project couldn't have happened without the support of VSO International so please donate to support all the great work they do. I will be getting paid roughly £8 a day so your donation goes a long way. We are volunteers with VSO so this approach is one of the most cost effective ways of fighting poverty.