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Sponsor a Child’s
Secondary Education!

School Fees Relief is a non-profit dedicated to solving the school fees problem in Malawian secondary schools.
It provides academically promising but financially disadvantaged Malawian boys and girls with comprehensive scholarships. It provides a scalable and sustainable solution to the school fees problem. .

What we do

Education not only helps people to survive but also thrive. The ripple effect education can trigger on individuals, their families, communities and nations cannot be overemphasized. All this aptly summarised by Nelson Mandela’s most famous quote on education: “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world!” That’s why School Fees Relief teams up with individuals as well as corporate, community and non-profit partners to solve one of education’s biggest problems – the lack of school fees..


Our Story

This vision for School Fees Relief was born from our founder Zengani Kayira’s own childhood experiences. Growing up, he saw a close relative denied the chance to continue secondary school education due to lack of school fees. Around the same time, a close friend with straight Bs in the Junior Secondary School national exams, was also forced to drop out – potential cut short by poverty.


Gravity of the school fees problem

In Malawi, there are a number of barriers to access to education and key among these that have been cited by numerous studies including the government and several other players in the education field is poverty. According to the World Bank report of December, 2025, 75% of the population in Malawi live on less than U$3 per day. With a huge population relying on subsistence farming, it’s an uphill task for most families to afford boarding fees in schools which usually hovers around $120 per term for most schools but can go much higher for others. This problem has for a long time contributed to very low secondary school completion rates and fuelling cases of early marriages when it comes to girls.

The new government realised the gravity of this problem and in a landmark historic reform, introduced free secondary school for all day secondary schools from January, 2026! We greatly commend them for that. However, students in boarding schools – usually where the best performing students are selected are still paying boarding fees. Similarly, students in open day secondary schools equally need help since they are also paying fees. School fees Relief not only supports such students with school fees but also helps with other education related expenses such as stationery, groceries, toiletries, uniform and others. The aim is to help them totally focus on their studies by not having to stress about school fees, stationery and other materials that can make learning difficult. Primary education has been free since the advent of multi-party democracy in 1994 in Malawi.

School Fees

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Support someones educaton by donatng school fees toour students

School Uniform

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You can donate scchool unform to one student or more, You can donate aphyscal unform or donate nform of money

Notesbooks, Pencils and Resources

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You can donate School Notebooks, Pens or pens and other school materals.

Please spare 4 minutes
to watch our charity appeal video

How You Can Support

Well-wishers like you can choose from any of the three categories below:

1. “Adopting” a student where you pay the entire fees and education related expenses of a student or students. In this case, you are made to know the students you are supporting and follow their academic progress. The amount here ranges from about $120 - $350 per year depending on whether it’s an open or boarding school.
2. Alternatively, you can choose to contribute to the pool and give a once off donation of any amount.
3. Contribute towards stationery – books, pens, mathematical sets and calculators. It was quite shocking and sad when we noted that many students struggled to even buy an ordinary pen. This speaks volumes of the levels of poverty we are dealing with here. In this category, you can kindly contribute $10 which can cater for notebooks and pens for an entire term.
4. Apart from the above, you can also choose to support our girl child empowerment project which is optional. For more information on the nature of our activities, visit the girl empowerment section.