This past June, seven Paschal students went on a trek with buildOn to Malawi, a developing country in East Africa. After spending the year fundraising as a chapter through bake sales, cycling classes, restaurant profit shares, letter-writing campaigns, and more, current seniors Ben Baum, Charlotte Borgers, Olivia Corbett, Avery Garcia, Cameron McAllister, Gabby Price, and Max Satz embarked on a life-changing service trip. 

BuildOn’s mission is “to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations through service and education”, primarily by building schools in developing countries. The non-governmental organization currently works in Burkina Faso, Guatemala, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Senegal, and has built 2,688 schools globally to date. Paschal’s chapter has remained active and supportive of buildOn’s mission for over ten years, sending several student treks abroad. 

This summer, Paschal’s trek team spent seven days in a small village called Bwanyundo, located in the Dowa region of Malawi. A day on trek in Malawi consisted of working with the community members to physically construct the school, participating in a different cultural workshop each afternoon, and staying with a local host family each evening. Favorite worksite jobs included carrying buckets of sand and water on heads, passing bricks in a chain, and mixing concrete.

Students enjoyed partaking in cultural activities like a pottery-making lesson, attending a local Roman Catholic Church, and visiting a finished buildOn school nearby to learn more about the organization’s adult literacy program. The trek team was also split into groups of two to three trek participants and paired with host families to live with for the week, where they ate dinner each evening, played games and conversed as much as possible despite the language barrier, received local Chichewa names to go by in the community, and bathed and slept at every night. 

Participants from the summer 2024 trek say that their time in Malawi was meaningful and perspective-shifting. buildOn reports that construction on the village school is almost complete; soon, 843 students (including 449 girls) will have a safe and sturdy school structure to learn in. The impact that this trek had on both the Paschal participants and local community members was immense and will last a lifetime. 

This school year, the Paschal chapter is working to fundraise and send another student team on trek to Nicaragua in summer 2025! If you are interested in getting involved with buildOn and making a difference abroad, follow @paschalbuildon on Instagram and send @phsbuildo to 81010 to join the Remind. You can also stop by Ms. Beasley’s room (234) if you have any questions, or reach out to current President Gabby Price (12th grade) and Vice President Kate Bearden (11th grade). Join buildOn!