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Constance Mhone
Agnes Salaka
M When Women Lead, Girls Stay in School How faith, female leadership, and diocesan partnership transformed girls’ education in Malawi In 2025, girls’ dropout rates in Anglican schools in southern Malawi fell from nearly 40% to almost zero. This transformation began with two women speaking truth.
alawi is a landlocked country in southeastern Africa and a male-dominated society where poverty made puberty a barrier to learning. Families could not afford sanitary supplies, schools lacked running water, and girls had no safe spaces to manage their hygiene. Students missed class, fell behind, and eventually stopped attending altogether. Without school, many were pushed into domestic labor or married early. Education did not fail them. Circumstances did. TWO WOMEN SPEAK UP The turning point came during a partnership pilgrimage — an official exchange visit organized between members of the Anglican Diocese of Southern Malawi and lay leaders of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. Constance Mhone and Agnes Salaka, both members of the Malawi’s Partnerships Committee, traveled to Texas as part of that delegation. During an all-women meeting, they named what was happening back home: Girls were dropping out of school between their 5th and 8th grades, worn down by a combination of poverty, cultural pressure, and the absence of basic facilities. They proposed a solution. And for the first time, the right people were listening.