Preparation
We operate with a team of over two dozen at-home volunteers conducting fabrication and assembly, packing, and preparing for our Malawi projects. The home team projects and planning are a massive undertaking, exceeding 90% of our annual activity, and facilitate the opportunity for many people within our church, as well as the greater community, to contribute their time and talents to create hope within some of the most vulnerable children on earth. Without traveling 8,000 miles! Therein lies the “active expression of faith through love.”
There are myriad challenges in what we do in Malawi. To bring lighting into the MOH centers with 10 foot high truss construction, we manufacture our own customized light fixtures. LEDs minimize the quantity of electricity we have to generate from the sun. Mounting the solar panels on the roof with large truss spacing requires custom aluminum frames which we manufacture, also to save cost. We have designed automated charging control and lighting control specific to the centers, for which we build the controls; our latest programs to expand our "carry-electricity-home" box program requires assembly-line production. Finally, it is only the expertise we've developed in international shipping that permits us to do the things we do. But a great deal of work is required to build the ever-increasing shipping packaging and crating demands. We have two dozen team members giving of their time and talents to accomplish the preparation work.
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Who are our team workers? LCPC members, friends, family, neighbors, adults and youth: all interested and after hearing the stories of our mission to Malawi, they become passionate the cause. Most will never travel to Malawi, or meet the countless people their efforts will benefit. But now they are forever united in the awareness of the need, and what they have contributed. Time is a precious commodity, and our team happily return again and again. We remain connected throughout the year by monthly meetings, our annual calendar, T shirts, our Facebook blog, this website.
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Shown here are just a few. Many other team members helped with the book collections and packing. Librarians throughout the community became aware of the Malawi children's needs for books, and organized donations. Enthusiastic folks at a pallet manufacturing company donated shipping crates, and a major and local rigging and transport company allowed us to offload our crates at their facility awaiting common carrier shipment to the container consolidator, many miles away.
This massive effort culminates in the packing and crating for shipment, via ocean container, to Malawi.
But that's quite another story.
