Digital marketing agencies AGY47 and Silverbean have teamed up with Classrooms for Malawi, a charity that works with schools in the UK to help children in Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest countries. The charity does this by helping children move out of poverty through education.
The marketing agency’s chief operations officer, Damian Hall, is providing strategic support as part of the award-winning Pilotlight programme. Pilotlight connects UK-based charitable organisations with business executives who provide their time and expertise to assist a charity’s growth.
Pilotlight has brought together senior legal, marketing, finance, business growth and people development experts as well as Classrooms for Malawi chief exec, Amy Blake, to create a team for growth. It will work towards three overriding objectives: to grow the Classrooms for Malawi schools programme in Scotland and beyond, which allows children to go to Malawi and help with the classroom building programmes; to help accelerate the development of schools on the ground in Malawi, and help address Malawi’s sustainable climate programme.
In Malawi, a child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past age five, but there is a deficit of over 70,000 classrooms. The need to build a sustainable education programme is stark.
AGY47 head of paid marketing, Sarah Williams, will deliver additional support by providing expert advice and training for the charity’s staff. Williams’ team will assist with paid marketing management, applications for Google funding grants on the charity’s behalf, and move the charity’s digital marketing to a place of high performance to improve its visibility and reach.
Hall said: “When I first joined Silverbean and AGY47, I looked at how we could continue to support local charities – this is really important as we want to support what is right in front of us. However, we recently expanded into Australia; it felt like the right time to look outwards at global projects while continuing to support local causes.
“Classrooms for Malawi has a personal connection for me: my dad was based in Malawi when I was growing up. Visiting there was one of the major life experiences that has shaped me into the person I am today.”
Williams said: “We find that when a company chooses six or seven different charities to support, it dilutes the impact they can make and the fundraising they do. We want to offer another level of support by providing our time and expertise to help.
“This will make a bigger impact and will help the charity more than if we’d just made a donation and moved on, plus we will raise the charity’s profile in the long term.”
To learn more about Classrooms for Malawi and donate, visit its website here.
To learn more about Pilotlight and the company’s work, click here.