At just seventeen, Luce travelled from Malta to Malawi to volunteer with The Sparkle Foundation, working across nutrition, healthcare and social media, and coming home with a new understanding of herself and the community she came to serve. This is the story of Luce's journey with purpose. 

I am seventeen, still in high school, and before this trip I had never volunteered abroad. But Africa was never entirely unfamiliar to me. The first time I went, I was very small, and it was for a special reason: my family had travelled there to adopt my brother. I do not remember much, just blurred smiles and a long flight, but my brother is part of who I am, and so, in some way, is Africa.

Even so, saying yes to Malawi took some courage.

During my three weeks with The Sparkle Foundation, I worked across nutrition, healthcare and social media, and even got to explore my love of photography, taking pictures for Sparkle's website and social media accounts.

One of my favourite memories is the first time I cooked with Chef Matthew and his team at the Sogoja site. Every day, the cooking team makes nsima, Malawi's staple food, in big pots over firewood. I cut vegetables and tried, not very successfully, to help stir the nsima myself.

Afterwards, I asked if I could try some, and one of the women showed me how to eat it properly: rolling a ball of nsima with one hand, then using it to scoop up meat and vegetables.

I loved it, and I am Italian, so you can trust my opinion on food. I have come to believe food is one of the simplest ways cultures understand each other. It tells you what grows in the land and how people cook, and sometimes it tells pieces of a whole story, all without a single word being spoken.

Before I arrived, I knew Sparkle worked with vulnerable children, their mothers and clinic patients, but I did not fully understand the scale of it. One of the first things I noticed was that every member of staff on site was Malawian. It seemed a small detail until I learned that around 90 percent of the population is unemployed, and steady, contracted work is rare.

Over the following days I visited the farm in Sakata, the school in Namitembo, spent a day with the outreach clinic, and saw the tailoring programme too.

By my second week, I understood how far the impact reaches. Early childhood centres support children aged two to six through their most crucial years of development, with a stable routine, early reading and counting, and proper nutrition.

As they grow, football and netball programmes build their confidence further, alongside after-school activities for primary-aged children. The change in Sogoja has been so significant that the area has gone from being classed as rural to peri urban.

Every programme works towards the same goal: a community that can sustain itself rather than depend on outside charity. The farm teaches sustainable agriculture for more fertile land, and training in solar panel installation gives families light to work by in the evenings and power to charge the phones their small businesses depend on.

It was hard, at times, riding in cars and watching children walk with even younger siblings on their backs, or women carrying water for miles, on foot or by bicycle.

One moment shifted something in me completely.

We had stopped the car, and I looked out to see two children sharing a single pair of flip-flops, one wearing the left, the other the right, holding hands and laughing as they crossed the street. It left a hole in my stomach. How could children with so little seem to smile more than those of us who have everything? I realised how fragile our comfortable lives really are, and how much we take for granted: water, healthcare, safety. It taught me to smile more, and to be grateful for what I have.

During my stay, I also met Aida, without question the most joyful person on the whole campus. She has worked with The Sparkle Foundation in Sogoja for eighteen years. When she started, she spoke only Chichewa; now she works fluently in English too, as the right hand to Doctor Sibo at the clinic, managing medicine distribution and so much more. Her energy and her laughter have stayed with me ever since.

I also saw tangible change happening in real time: delivering mattresses and blankets around Sogoja, bringing shoes and toys to the school in Namitembo, and cheering on a fiercely contested netball match between girls supported by their coaches and the wider Sparkle community.

These three weeks were hard. There were mentally and emotionally difficult moments, and plenty of cold showers, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. But I learned more than I expected, and I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity.

If you are thinking about volunteering with The Sparkle Foundation, whether from home or in Malawi itself, know that it will ask something of you. It means confronting a reality far less comfortable than the one most of us are used to. But that discomfort is exactly what helps you grow, whatever age you are. I would go back to Malawi in a heartbeat, and in the meantime, I am finding ways to put the hundreds of photographs still on my laptop to good use.

If I had to sum up my three weeks in one sentence, it would be this: the warm heart of Africa is like a mirror. It makes you look at yourself and want to change everything, so if you think you need to change, go, because more often than not, volunteering is not about you changing the world. It is about the world changing you.

Luce arrived curious and unsure. She left with a deeper understanding of community, self-sufficiency and herself.

Her experience is a reminder that volunteering is not only about what you give — but what you learn.

Sometimes, the world changes you more than you change it.



If Luce’s story inspires you, you can join your own Journey with Purpose or support The Sparkle Foundation from anywhere.

Your journey might begin with a flight, a classroom, or simply a decision to see the world differently.

And it may change more than you expect.