2005 HEALTH AWARD
Malawi Children’s Village
After surviving a tragic airplane accident, Dr. Chakunja Sibale decided to dedicate his life to the orphaned children of Malawi, where the AIDS virus caused great devastation. There are nearly 1 million orphaned children in the country of Malawi alone. In 1996, Sibale founded the Malawi Children’s Village (MCV) to provide food, shelter, medical care and education to these children. Sibale and the MCV aim to improve the conditions in which these children live and raise the standard of orphan care throughout the world.
In 2004, the MCV provided aid to more than 3,200 orphans across 37 villages in Malawi and provided food for 1,900 households caring for orphans. As director of the MCV, Sibale runs the medical clinic central to the program. He has also been instrumental in the establishment of a new initiative, Orphan Support Africa, which aims to implement 10 new community-based orphan programs in the next three years, helping more than 35,000 children. The MCV has made an immense impact throughout the world, and has served as a model for other African orphanages. Through a program called the Mango Tree Project in southern Tanzania, the MCV served as a training site for Tanzanian staff members, and MCV staff traveled to Tanzania to implement on-site training. The continued dedication of Sibale and the MCV is a sign of hope to Africa and the world.