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From Dowa to the World: Matthews’ Path to Greatness
Matthews Jevan likes to say his life “opened up the day someone believed in me.” The belief came from There is Hope (TIH), and it pushed a young man from a small farming village in Dowa onto a path that now stretches from Malawi’s maize fields to advanced training centres in Israel and the United States.
Growing up in Matewere village, deep in the Dowa mountains, the son of small-scale farmers whose earnings seldom went beyond basic survival. School was a daily balancing act: long walks, no textbooks, unpaid fees, and the quiet fear that one day the gates would simply close on him.
“I wanted to work hard,” he recalls, “but wanting is different when you don’t have the tools.”
That changed in 2019. After he was selected to study Irrigation Engineering at LUANAR, he applied to TIH for help, following in the footsteps of his older sister who had already been supported by the organisation. TIH stepped in, paying tuition and easing the financial strain that had shadowed his education for years. Matthews says that support became “the difference between studying with constant worry and actually learning.”
The result was a shift not only in his grades, but in the way he carried himself. Lecturers noticed a student who suddenly could focus, participate, and excel.
By his third year, that growth took him thousands of kilometres from home. He earned a place in a cross-border agricultural programme in Israel, where he worked with precision-farming tools he had only read about.
“It felt like stepping into the future,” he says. “I realised Malawi can get there too.”
Now nearing graduation, he is preparing for another leap, an internship in the United States that will expose him to large-scale, advanced agricultural systems. These opportunities, he insists, trace back to the scholarship that steadied his path.
“TIH didn’t just pay school fees,” he says. “They gave me a springboard. They made it possible for me to dream boldly.”
And as his own world expands, Matthews is reaching back to lift others. Today he volunteers as a mentor to TIH’s secondary school scholarship recipients, offering guidance, checking on their well-being, and helping them cope mentally and psychologically with the pressures he once knew too well.
“No one succeeds alone,” he says. “I want them to feel the same support that changed my life.”
His ambitions remain rooted firmly at home. When he returns from the United States, Matthews hopes to build a commercial farming enterprise and support young people entering agriculture.
“We can feed this country,” he says. “We just need the skills and a chance.”
His journey is one thread in a larger world TIH has been weaving for nearly two decades, one where education lifts households, strengthens communities, and helps young Malawians step into roles that shape the country’s future. When talent meets opportunity, and when a single scholarship becomes a turning point for a life, a family, and potentially a nation, the country can mould as many Matthews Jevan as possible.