When Ndaona was a child, he was starving. He snuck out of his classes to find food, and he struggled to survive. 

                                                        

                                                                                                  Ndaona as a young child, who often went hungry.
 
Then he came to COTN’s Feeding Center in Malawi, where generous partners like you saved his life.
 
The food at the Feeding Center isn’t just packaged meals shipped to Africa from the United States. A lot of the food that children like Ndaona eat is grown right in Malawi at COTN’s own Chichere Farm.


                                                       


Chichere (chi-CHAIR-ee) Farm produces maize, tomatoes, sunflower oil, greens, sweet potatoes, and other crops. The farm also raises cattle, pigs, and fish.
 
Food from Chichere Farm goes to our feeding programs in different villages and to our secondary school, the International Christian Academy (ICA). The Farm feeds 1,200 children each day!

                                            
                                                        
Thanks to your investment in the Chichere Farm, COTN–Malawi is less dependent on nutritious packaged meals sent from the US. Now, our children can eat more food that was grown in their own country and harvested by other Malawians. 
 
“Establishing sustainable farms in Malawi would change their economy from a donation-receiving country to a food-exporting breadbasket of southeast Africa,” says Dave Schertzer, COTN’s Chief Resource Officer. 
 
                                                     
 
Our prayer is that all five of the countries we serve will one day be able to produce all the food they need without relying on us. That’s why the success of the Chichere Farm is so exciting!
 
“[The feeding program] really helped me so much,” Ndaona says. “Every morning, I had breakfast. Every day, I had lunch. . . . In Africa, most of the kids suffer malnutrition, but I did not because of this program.”
 
                                                                                   
 
                                                                                Thanks to you, Ndaona’s story didn't end with him going hungry. He grew up to
                                                                                                be a healthy young man who even went to college! 
 
Thank you so much for feeding children like Ndaona and supporting sustainable food sources for Malawi! 
 

by Meredith Sutton, COTN staff writer