Lighthouse and Mphatso

This morning Ashley and I had an early morning meeting with our Partners at Lighthouse. We got to briefly sit in on the morning meeting then met with Daneck Kathumba, Prof. Sam Phiri, Micrina Mwandeti. We had a very productive meeting discussing the progress that the groups have made in addition to where we want to see the groups go in the coming years. Prof. Sam Phiri has made plans to go visit the Area 50 group and Mphatso group in the coming weeks. In October there is a big meeting held by Lighthouse where the support groups show off the goods that they make. This year the Vice President of Malawi will be in attendance. This will give our groups a great opportunity to tell more individuals about the work that they are doing. We are hoping that we might be able to plan a trip around this annual meeting next year.

At Mphatso group we saw the amazing products they have made over the past week. I'm really excited to share their talents. We have started giving fabric to the tailors in the group, so that everyone can contribute, to make knitting bags. We have Christmas ornaments and Christmas stockings, ponchos, bracelets, a tie, and we got some samples for the local shops in Lilongwe. Tasha will bring the samples to the shops to see if they are interested in stocking the knitted items. We are also looking into knitting labels for the items so it can be identified which group made them while in Malawi. I'm really looking forward to selling all of these awesome items in the craft shows in the US as well as some boutique shops in Alexandria, Virginia.