Barely three weeks after launching his foundation, musician Patience Namadingo on Friday bailed out a University of Malawi— Chancellor College—student Dyson Billiat, donating K150,000 towards his tuition fees.
The singer and guitarist made the donation in Blantyre following Billiat’s call in the media that his university education was under threat.
“We launched the Patience Namadingo Foundation three weeks ago and this is all about looking into education. We want to help the needy and help change lives,” said Namadingo.
He said having read in the papers that Billiat was in need of fees, they thought of assisting him to realise his dream.
“It’s not that the foundation has more money but the little we have we can help out. As a foundation, we have so many programmes on paper that we are yet to implement and as I said we do not have so much but we can help change an individual and the impact will be huge,” said the Msati Mseke hit maker.
He said as a young person with full of energy he thought of putting up the foundation to help others especially in helping brilliant students out there.
Billiat told The Daily Times that he scored 15 points in his MSCE examinations before being selected to Chancellor College in Zomba to pursue a Bachelor of Social Science degree.
But having done his first semester and looking ahead to second semester, the first year student’s education looks bleak.
He is among the several students from different University of Malawi constituent colleges, who cannot afford to pay school fees.
“Since my father could not manage to raise the university fees I applied for a loan from the government and was only given half of the K275,000. This means I have to raise the remaining money and on top of that I have to find money for food and accommodation,” Billiat said.
Billiat is not a new name as at 14 years old, he came to the music limelight releasing songs such as Mchikumbe Walira.
His journey to recording his album came through his street performances as he used to come all the way from Chiradzulu to Blantyre.
And so it was during one of the performances that he ended up meeting Amoo Jussab, who was impressed with his talent and decided to sponsor him to record an album.
Billiat was still in school and used to perform to assist his family and it was during this time that Samuel Kaphuka came in and gave him a bursary to continue his education.
He started in standard five at Kaphuka Primary through to secondary.
“I am so thankful to Patience Namadingo Foundation. I didn’t have the fees but now I am ready to go back to school and all I can say is I will continue to work hard,” said Billiat.
He added that since he opened up to the media about his problem, he has not received any help and that Namadingo’s gesture came in at the right time.
“For those who would like to help me they can call me on 0888967534,” said Billiat.
Meanwhile, Namadingo revealed on the sidelines of the donation that he is leaving today for United States of America alongside his manager Tonderai Banda for performances.
“We started talking about the USA trip longtime ago but now everything is set, we are leaving on Monday (today). We have shows with Giddes Chalamanda and Edgar ndi Davis and then more other shows on my own,” said the musician.
The singer said he will do all his best to fly the country’s flag and make sure that he brings out results through the tour.
“It’s going to be fun because we will visit more cities but again we don’t want to perform only to Malawians. There is a lot I am going to do, I have scheduled meetings with record labels to give them the Malawi product,” said Namadingo.
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