Over 100 people celebrated the progress made by Urbana’s sister cities program with Zomba, Malawi, Saturday evening.

Visitors ate a variety of southern African foods such as goat curry stew, fried plantains and nsima — a main course dish similar to grits — while they waited for the Kwela music to begin.

Wongani Katundu and the Machona Band performed the southern African music with a variety of performers and instruments. Their upbeat music drew more than 30 dancers for some songs as well as cheers for an encore of a song performed by two children playing clarinets.

The event was the final community outreach activity funded by a $15,000 grant from the University’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement. This grant has also funded educational programs within the Urbana school district and the Urbana Free Library as part of the Urbana-Zomba Sister Cities program.

Tholani Hlongwa, graduate student in the Center for African Studies and coordinator for outreach, began working with elementary schools last spring.

“The spring semester was kind of a pilot visit because everything was new,” Hlongwa said. “We were creating everything from scratch.”

She said the curriculum changed this fall to align with Illinois education standards.

This included supplying 90 copies of “Galimoto” to elementary schools. Students read the book about a Malawian boy who constructs a toy car out of scrap wires and then were given the supplies to build their own cars.

Carol Inskeep, youth services librarian for the Urbana Free Library, collaborated with the sister cities program for several community activities.

A screening of “Water First” gave citizens and University students in the College of Education a chance to learn more about the issues that force many African students to drop out of school.

“(The students) wanted to understand why some kids can drop out in some other countries, like in Malawi,” Hlongwa said. “Mostly girls drop out of school because of (a lack of) water.”

Grant money supplied free copies of “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” a book about a courageous Malawian boy, to residents so they could discuss it together. The library had to add a second meeting because of the high level of interest.

She said there was an overall “strong response” to the library’s events and will look for future possibilities to work with the sister cities program.

“All the things just humanize the people from Malawi,” Inskeep said. “I would expect the library will do more programming.”

Attendees were also given an update on the construction in Zomba that is part of the $115,000 grant from Sister Cities International.

Scott Dossett, project manager for the Africa Urban Poverty Alleviation Program within Sister Cities International, said construction in Zomba is on schedule and going well.

“(Construction workers are) going into their rainy season now, so we have footings; those really mean a lot to me because that means that we’ve done the in-ground work already for most of these projects,” Dossett said.

He said this work would not be possible during the rainy season, so its completion will allow construction crews to work without interruption during the season. He said the work in Zomba will be likely be completed in April 2012 and the sister cities program will then look for new projects in Malawi.

Dossett added that the Sister Cities committee meets every third Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Urbana city building and is open to all members of the public.