Dear friends,
We hope you all had wonderful Holidays and a Good New Year Celebration.
We received two quick Christmas celebration videos from Zahana that we have posted on our YouTube Zahana Channel. If you get a chance, click on the link and have a look.
Both videos are from the December 23, 2012 celebration at our school in Fiadanana, with our students dancing. As you will see, the tree planted in front of the school doubled as a Christmas tree once again. It has substantially grown over the years. Check out the photos from 2010 and 2011 and watch the video to see it grow.
Thank you for your support!
Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus
Links:
Although it has been reported that Santa visits Hawaii last on the globe, he must have stopped in our villages in Madagascar already on December 23. The children were ready to celebrate with a Christmas tree in their classroom. The bags they so proudly display in the photo are filled with gifts from Santa.
Despite the excitement of Santa’s visit and the Christmas celebration at night, the children also took part in the community-wide tree planting effort, planting trees in their school yards. Later at night, they celebrated with dancing and drumming and eating cake that had been baked in the solar box cooker, provided by Zahana.
We hope in case you are in the fortunate position of making end-of-year giving decisions, you may considers Zahana in Madagascar as well. And, if you have already done so, thank you very much for your support. We have currently half a dozen projects with GlobalGiving that make online donations a breeze. While there are very nice ways and euphemisms out there to talk about donations, the bottom line still is that without your support, now for the seventh year, our work in Madagascar would not be possible.
Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus
Zahana has always tried to do outreach to neighboring communities. Planting Moringa trees has been successful for us, thanks to our gardeners. We have done this, (see website), not only because Moringa are fast growing trees, but their leaves, flowers and seed pods are highly nutritious. We plan to plant many more Moringa trees, something we jokingly call our Moringa forests. Originally we started with 1 kg gram of seeds we acquired from the Minister of Agroforestry.
During our site visit in December 2012 a bolder idea emerged: The next time we will buy more Moringa seeds and distribute it to schools in neighboring villages as well. It is our hope, that the teachers will plant the seeds with their students and grow Moringa trees in their school yards. We will offer to the teachers, that our gardeners will come and visit their village and work with the students on their gardening activities. This is a rather innovative project, because currently only Zahana’s schools have school gardens. Many people have told us that in the 1960s, after independence from France, they had school gardens and growing food was part of their curriculum. It is a rather small investment of time and money to plant a seed that may grow huge benefits of good will and improved nutrition.
We hope in case you are in the fortunate position of making end-of-year giving decisions, you may considers Zahana in Madagascar as well. And, if you have already done so, thank you very much for your support. We have currently half a dozen projects with GlobalGiving that make online donations a breeze. While there are very nice ways and euphemisms out there to talk about donations, the bottom line still is that without your support, now for the seventh year, our work in Madagascar would not be possible.
Happy 2013!
Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus
Links:
