Peter Maseko had worked his entire career at regional hospitals and was constantly frustrated by the inaccessibility of medical care in rural areas of Malawi. In a country where 25% of children under the age of 15 die of disease and starvation and 62% of the population lives in extreme poverty, most people do not have access to adequate health care. It is common for people to walk for days to receive medical attention, often unable to make it at all.
After years of service and saving, Peter and his wife, Emma, opened Pothawira in 2013. Pothawira (meaning “Safe Haven” in Chichewa) is a rural community that includes a medical clinic, church, school and orphanage located near their home in Salima. More than 200 people visit the clinic each day. Almost 300 children attend the kindergarten through eighth grade classes during the week, and the same building doubles as a community church on the weekends. There are over 100 orphaned and vulnerable children live there as well.
The children’s homes at Pothawira provide holistic family-based care. Each family includes a house mother and 10-12 children of varying ages that live in duplexes. Five duplexes were originally constructed to house 100 children. Those numbers quickly rose to 113. Due to such overcrowding, the Hovde Foundation partnered with the Global Orphan Project in 2015 to build an additional duplex. The 6th duplex was completed in 2016, allowing for 120 children to call Pothawira home and receive the love and care they need to thrive.
To learn more about Pothawira, please visit https://goproject.org/village/pothawira.
