St Peters Girls Secondary School
Dr Edgar Kuchingale is a medical doctor and Managing Director of St Peters Girls Secondary School. He has worked in the medical profession for 26 years and is closer to retiring this year. As he was planning for his life after retirement, he always thought of doing something that would contribute towards the socio-economic development of the country apart from serving as a medical doctor.
“When I die as a medical doctor, I will go away with the skill but investing in education is something that will continue to pass on to the next generation even when I am in the grave. I had 17 hectares of land inherited from my family, I had two choices to make either to use it as a farm or build a school that will shape the future of so many generations after me. From my savings I started building the primary school and secondary school in 2006 and established the school in 2019. Then later in 2021, Kuchingale decided to expand by building a girls' secondary school. During that year it was not easy to build as we were coming from Covid-19 period which affected most businesses.
“I applied for a loan with NBM development Bank and got K400 million in April 2023. In 2021 I had already started building the project but most of the blocks were at foundation level.
“With this amount I have managed to complete building the new girls’ secondary school within 3 years from 2021 to 2023; instead of 5 years from 2021 to 2026 as I had initially planned. This has been possible because of the FInES loan.
The loan has transformed the level of status for my school. St Peters school is in Dowa, located 58 kilometers from Lilongwe. Kuchingale has now enrolled 850 students (300 students in primary school and 550 students in secondary school. He has employed 110 staff from 90 staff he initially recruited before FInES support. He said out of the 850 students, 17 students are on bursary scheme.
In terms of the annual income earnings, there has been an improvement from MK300 million to MK700 million kwacha. He has confidence that this will even improve next year as the school is now getting a lot of publicity by word of mouth from clients because of the quality of the teaching and the beautiful infrastructure.
“I wish the World Bank should continue with this facility for SMEs as it has assisted to achieve our dreams within the shorter period. The fact that the loans are low interest is also good for the country as it is contributing towards financial inclusion,” Kuchingale concludes.
Please see link https://youtu.be/2bja4t9DOE4
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