Maji Zuwa was started by Matt Maroon, an American who decided to take a year off and volunteer in Malawi after finishing his bachelor’s degree many years ago. One year turned into many more and Matt has called Malawi home ever since.

During his volunteer stint, Matt was the Financial Controller and Acting Director of Miracle Technical College for Orphans in the small town of Karonga, just north of where we are now. Concurrently, he taught high school social studies and biology at Chaminade Boarding School and was in charge of a Women’s Empowerment Program which allocated micro-credit loans to widows and orphans. During the hunger months of 2006-2007, Matt managed a grain distribution program in rural Malawi which provided sustenance to over 1500 families who would have otherwise risked starvation (times were even tougher back then). After two years as a volunteer, Matt was hooked on the warm and hospitable culture of Malawi.

In 2010, following a master’s degree in the USA in the field of Cultural and Applied Anthropology, where he also worked full time to save up to start Maji Zuwa, Matt returned to Malawi and chose the Chilumba area (where we are) with a dream of creating a space where visitors and local people could come together to work on development issues. With this in mind, Matt founded the non-profit NGO Determined to Develop (www.determinedtodevelop.org) to support the development work associated with the surrounding villages. It was all a bottom-up approach with consultation meetings with the people, chiefs, villagers, and civil society in order not to impose any development ideas, but rather join on people’s own ideas of what development means to them. Matt moved to localize that development by working with the chiefs to create an education foundation that took over the work from the NGO, and now, everything is localized with local leadership and a sustainable business plan through the Wasambo Education Foundation (www.wasambo.org). Thousands of kids through school, millions of meals, and thousands more girls empowered, the work continues to this day.

Aside from his work with Maji Zuwa, Determined to Develop, and the Wasambo Education Foundation, Matt previously lectured full-time at the University of Livingstonia where he held the post of Dean of the College of Social Sciences and was the only expatriate on the faculty. He also served as the country manager for Lattitude Global Volunteering, a UK-based charity that provided service opportunities for young people to teach in high schools in very rural areas of Malawi, from 2011 to 2018. he was the program manager and lecturer for the Malawi Practicum on Human Rights and Development, which brought together American and Malawian university students to engage in social science research, and he worked at the headquarters of USAID/Malawi as the Senior Education Advisor for a number of years. If you find that he’s visiting Maji Zuwa, he’s a great source of information if you’re looking to chat about international development, education, or social entrepreneurship!