The CharChar Trust

Who we are

On March 24th 2007, Charlotte Parker, a bright, happy, life-loving girl of just ten and a half years old lost her life together with her mother, Veronica, to an elephant attack. In memory of these tragic losses, and in the generous spirits of both mother and daughter, the CharChar Trust was established to bring literacy and hope to the children of Africa

The sole mission of the CharChar Trust is to empower and enable African children to help themselves to a brighter future through literacy.

Introduction

The founding mission of The CharChar Trust, established in 2007, is to help the young children of Malawi improve their literacy and comprehension in English and in their own language. The CharChar Reader Series was developed to meet a serious shortage of suitable reading materials. The Trust has produced a series of colourful and entertaining books including a dictionary. The Trust has also developed a variety of teaching and learning materials and a secure, weather and insect proof chest providing easy access to the educational materials. To date CharChar has delivered over 1000 chests and more than 500,000 Readers and dictionaries in Malawi.

CharChar Literacy Program

CharChar experience shows that unless the beneficiary schools are supported by a combination of interventions, the value of the Readers, dictionaries and other educational materials, is significantly diminished. For this reason CharChar has developed an embryonic literacy program based on three pillars - CharChar Readers, Teacher Support (Bridging the Gap qualified volunteer teachers “BtG”) and a Phonics Program.

Chests

The CharChar Chest is a sturdy, bright pink, attractive chest containing supplementary teaching and learning resources. The Chests are particularly useful where there is no secure school library. 2018 Chest contents include educational posters, whiteboards & pens, crayons, puzzles, dictionaries and a collection of supplementary Readers.

Volunteering for CharChar can take many forms. We need social media geeks to raise our profile, qualified teachers to help train local primary school teachers, community health and medical professionals are always welcome too as we travel to bush schools and communities regularly. We often come across adults and chidren with health issues that would sadly otherwise go unattended.