| Mission * The Jacaranda Foundation's mission is to provide quality free primary, secondary and tertiary educations to orphans in Malawi, as well as daily meals, agriculture activities, health education classes and special care to our HIV positive students, with a spirit of hard work, generosity, compassion and self-reliance. The Jacaranda Foundation operates the Jacaranda School for Orphans, the only entirely free primary and secondary school in the whole of Malawi. We provide our 400 orphan students with daily meals, AIDS education classes, agriculture activities through our vegetable garden and chicken farm, and we offer college scholarships to all our high school graduates. |
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Contact us
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info@jacarandafoundation.org
Our address in the U.S.: Jacaranda Foundation, 2578 Broadway, Suite 142 New York NY 10025, USA. |
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Our address in Malawi:
Jacaranda School for Orphans, P.O. Box 5708, Limbe, Malawi. |
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The Jacaranda School for Orphans is located in Che Mboma village, Newlands, Chigumula, near the city of Limbe, in the South of Malawi. We are on the road to Thyolo, 2 kms from Limbe.
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Born and raised in Malawi, Marie Da Silva worked as a nanny in the U.S. for eighteen years. She lost fifteen members of her family to the AIDS pandemic, including her father and two of her brothers. In 2002, after realizing many children were left out of school in her home village of Che Mboma, she founded the Jacaranda School for Orphans within her family house. She turned the bedrooms, the living room, the pantry, even the garage, into classrooms. For seven years, she spent a third of the monthly income she earned working as a nanny on the salaries of the teachers and the few school supplies she could afford. In October 2008, Marie was recognized as a CNN Hero for her amazing dedications to orphans in Malawi. Today, Marie still works part time as a nanny and spends the rest of her time fundraising and speaking in schools and universities around the world. Click here for more on Marie, in her own words. You can email Marie at marie@jacarandafoundation.org |
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Why did Marie call the school Jacaranda?
Read her heartbreaking story. |
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| Marie Da Silva, President & Founder | |||||||||||||||||||||
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More on Marie with CNN Heroes videos & story.
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Born and raised in France, Luc Deschamps obtained his Master in journalism from the university of CELSA Paris IV Sorbonne. In 1993/1994, he worked as assitant director of the French Cultural Center in Malawi and fell in love with African music and Arts. He then moved to New York City where he spent 9 years teaching French and working as a journalist, launching notably an African Music TV show called Sounds of Africa TV. In July 2007, Luc decided to come back to Malawi to boost the development of the Jacaranda School. Two weeks after his arrival, he nominated Marie as CNN Hero from a nearby internet cafe. For the past four years, Luc has been supervising the development of the Jacaranda school, the construction projects and the day to day management of both primary and secondary sections. He is also documenting the "story of Jacaranda" on photo and video, and he manages the Jacaranda Foundation website. You can email Luc at luc@jacarandafoundation.org |
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| Luc Deschamps, Executive Director |
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A Jacaranda tree in Los Angeles, California.
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Board of Trustees of the Jacaranda Foundation in Malawi Chairperson - Isaac Nsamala (Former CEO of National Bank of Malawi) Vice chairperson & Founder: Marie Da Silva Secretary General & Director: Luc Deschamps Treasurer: Anita Mankhambo (Investigator at the Malawi Anti Corruption Bureau) Board Member: Honourable Aaron Sangala (Member of Parliament; Malawi Minister of Home Affairs and National Defence) Board Member: Reed Morrissey Board Member: Limangeni Mankhambo (Medical Doctor) |
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Jacaranda School children next to Jacaranda trees in Malawi.
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