Stories4schools

25/11/2025

30/09/2024

Note: join the group for information and support about stories4schools: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stories4schools

Stories4schools began as a project to support children in Malawi for whom English was a requirement to progress through the school system even though it isn’t their normal spoken language.

A group of volunteers first came together through the Young Movers programme organised at the National Communities Resource Centre. The volunteers were primarily young people from areas of deprivation throughout the UK who helped youth and community groups to organise community activities in their local areas. Some of those involved with this work took part in a number of expeditions to work with schools and orphan projects in Tanzania and Malawi.

Children wishing to progress to secondary school in Malawi were expected to speak English even though it wasn't their normal spoken language. Support with English language skills were therefore a regular request during our visits. STORIES4SCHOOLS began as an effort to help towards this need on a more lasting basis than our short visits could achieve.

The project was initially supported by the the Royal Society of Arts and over a number of years various schools across the UK created story books which were distributed to schools and orphan projects in Africa and countries in other parts of the world, sometimes to schools linked together through the International Schools Award.

The project is self financing with schools in the UK able to recuperate their costs of involvement by selling copies of their book. Typically schools use the profits they make from book sales to send additional copies of their storybooks overseas for the benefit of children such as those in Malawi. Additional support has also been provided by way of provisions for writing, literacy and arts materials and resources and in one case a school in Malawi has been supported to have their own book of stories published (see Stories from Mbame).

12/04/2022

Small edit needed for Y3 artwork for their stories4schools story book 😅🧐

15/05/2018

Hot off the press - the latest stories4schools book:

08/09/2017

09/07/2017

15/05/2017

Posters featuring the most recent stories4schools book

27/04/2017

Artwork by children in Reception and Year 1 for the next stories4schools book

27/02/2016

08/02/2016

Reception children at Knightlow School in Warwickshire (UK) say hello to their partner schools in India, Uganda and Malawi as they begin their stories4schools book: