MILL

The problem isn't that school is undervalued

It is easy to assume children drop out because families don't see the point of education. In the villages we're working in, that isn't what's happening. Families see the point perfectly well. The arithmetic just doesn't work.

By around thirteen, a child is old enough to do a day's labour, and a household under pressure needs that day's labour more than it needs a certificate in four years' time. So the child works. School isn't rejected — it's outbid.

And then there's how they're paid

Here is the part that makes it worse. A child who works a day in the fields is often not paid in cash. They're paid in kind — commonly a couple of bags of maize, still on the cob, dried but unmilled.

That is maize in its least valuable, least usable form. It is bulky, it is awkward to carry, and it cannot be cooked or eaten until it has been shelled and ground. The household has been handed something worth real money, but only after work it can't easily do. Many end up trading it on at a loss, or paying a commercial miller a cut to process it.

So the child has spent a day out of school and come home with a sack of value they can't fully unlock.

What MILL changes

One intervention, in one place: put the mill at the school.

The child carries their cobs to school rather than home. They attend class. The maize is ground on site during the day. They go home in the afternoon with milled maize meal — the same wage, in the form that's actually worth something, ready to cook, without a miller's cut taken out of it.

Nothing has been taken away from the household. The child hasn't been asked to choose education over income. The income simply got bigger, and it happens to be collected at school.

• The load gets carriedTwo large carrier bags, made from recycled billboard vinyl, sized for a load of cobs and tough enough to survive it. They ride on a bicycle.
• The bags go to classThe same two bags are built to work as school bags. No child arrives carrying something that marks them out as the one who works.
• The maize is milled on siteA grinder at the school turns the day's cobs into maize meal while the child is in the classroom.
• The household is better offMeal instead of cobs, no milling fee, no loss on a rushed trade. The wage is worth more because the child went to school.

Billboards, of all things

Advertising vinyl is built to survive years of sun, wind and rain on a roadside hoarding, and then it's thrown away. It is close to the perfect material for this: waterproof, extremely tough, already paid for by somebody else, and free of the cost that would otherwise make these bags unaffordable.

Every bag is cut from a used billboard, which means no two are the same. The offcuts don't go to waste either — they become the wallets, laptop bags and gym bags in the range below.

Sponsor the kit

Same model as our trees: this is a purchase of a service, not a donation. You are paying for specific things to be made and delivered, and we'll tell you when they were.

The range that pays for it

The same billboard vinyl, cut by the same hands, makes goods worth selling in Cape Town and Amsterdam. That is deliberate. Every wallet and laptop bag sold carries the cost of the children's carry kits, which is how the kits stay affordable at the school end.

The range is in production now and not yet on general sale. Tell us which one you want and we'll come back to you the moment it ships.

Where MILL is

MILL is running as a pilot in Malawi. We're deliberately not publishing participation figures or outcome numbers yet, because we'd rather report something true later than something impressive now. When the first full term is behind us, the numbers go on this page whether they flatter us or not — the same way we handle where your money goes.

If you build things, we want to hear from you

MILL needs used billboard vinyl, people who can sew it, schools willing to host a mill, and someone who knows small-scale milling equipment better than we do. If that is you or someone you know, get in touch. This one doesn't scale on money alone.