AN appeal to Times readers to help a Tavistock teenager's community aid efforts in poverty-stricken Malawi has so far raised more than £2,400.

Mia Thomas, a 19-year-old former Tavistock College student, has been living in rural Malawi since last September. She is doing voluntary work at the local hospital and teaching children at both government and village schools.

She has been hugely affected by the poverty she has seen, and set about trying to re-build the village school room and instigate feeding programmes for the children, many of whom are orphans.

This is Mia's response to the way people in Tavistock and the surrounding area have been moved to help, following the front-page appeal in the Times in April. It has taken some time for the news to reach Mia and for her to react, following power disruptions and broken telephone lines.

She said: 'When I heard that the Times was printing extracts from my newsletters in an effort to help raise money for the Malawian community where I am working I was slightly dubious as to the reaction it would get.

'Yes, friends and family I could hope to give donations — which they did in amounts which amazed me — again thank you to them. But would anyone I didn't know very well, or at all, care enough about what I was up to to give money?

'It appears I grossly underestimated the generosity of Tavistock and the surrounding area!

'The current total raised is £2,445. The gratitude I feel is immense.

'Beyond my own feelings, what this money means to the community here is huge. The building is very nearly finished. The walls have risen up and been bedecked in smooth, smart plaster. All that remains is to finish bricking and cementing the floor and painting the walls, for which I shall don my smock and leave the position of overseer — I have volunteered my services as a painter.

'Then we will remove the "local ladders" — made of knobbly trees — and fill it with chanting and singing and playing and learning.

'Projects like this need money to start but they also need money to continue. Feeding the children needs to be ongoing.

'We have been providing food for the children of Lundu and another CBCC (Community-Based Childcare Centre) for five months now. These children are benefitting so much from the education, as well as the vital meal they receive each day at the school.

'The school gives them a place to learn, to play together and be children, rather than working at home or in the fields as would otherwise be the case, as well as that absolutely critical lifeline in the form of a meal.

'It is a community project so the school building will have other uses. A member of Tiphedzane — the local NGO I work with — is organising the start-up of a community-funded and run banking scheme, to help provide loans at minimal interest rates.

'I also intend to start a community garden next to the school which students will help maintain and then enjoy the produce.

'Malawi has become my world but I am aware that before I came here it was to me — and most possibly it is to some of you — a vaguely known country in an unknown location.'

Mia said the death of Malawi's president in?April had freed the country from his 'dictator-style rule' and people now placed their hope in his sucessor, Mrs Joyce Banda.

In an attempt to bring the tumbling economy back from free-fall she had been forced to devalue the currency, causing prices to soar on imported essentials.

Mia said: 'On the large scale it is widely understood that the devaluation was necessary, but for local villagers it has made an already tough situation even tougher right now, meaning projects like the Lundu CBCC are even more important.

'I am so lucky to be here and see the benefit of what you have given. Watching the school structure rising up throughout the building process, seeing how tiny it looked when the foundations were being dug and its transformation to now standing tall and proud — a giant of clean cut lines amidst the rust red brick houses of the village.

'It is wonderful to see the children rushing to their bowls of food and sitting around in little circles eating up every last bite, hearing them chant the days of the week on their own after singing it out to them for the last month, their eager smiles.

'From them, from me, I thank you all for giving so generously.'

'I've never said two little words with so much feeling behind them: Thank You.'