GlobalGiving.org: A dedicated micro credit fund for rural Madagascar

Make a gift in honor of somebody this season

Markus Faigle — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:14:32 GMT

A big Thank You to all of our donors who supported our Zahana Microcredit fund (or the 'true seed fund' as we like to call it) over the years!

You make our work possible. We couldn't do it without you!

Did you know you can make donations to any our Zahana projects at GlobalGiving as gifts to friends and loved ones this holiday season? This gift in honor of someone might relieve you of the agonizing thought: what could I give her or him? (and help Zahana at the same time).

To make a gift in honor of somebody is easy: In a few minutes (and a few clicks) you can create a personalized greeting card via our project pages on GlobalGiving. Just click on the third giving option “gift or in honor of” right under the big orange “donate” button on any of our 4 project pages.

We just recently added our latest project Planting 15000 trees in Madagascar (#9470), which is eligible as well.

You can chose if GlobalGiving will send the gift recipient an email, print-at-home, or physical tribute card. As an added bonus you will help us to participate in the ‘tribute card challenge’ with bonus prizes* between $500 and $1,500. And even better the challenge lasts until the last day of the 2011 tax year: December 31.

Thank you for your support.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

*GlobalGiving is awarding funds to the projects that are able to get the most donations made in honor or in memory of someone between November 23, 2011 and December 31, 2011. Prizes between $500 and $1,500 will be awarded to the projects with the most number of donations made in honor of someone.

Links:

Ducks in a basket

Markus Faigle — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:57:14 GMT

Buying the ducks in the market

A while back Zahana bought a dozen ducklings in a basket. We gave the basket to our partner in the village in the hope the ducklings may build the foundation for and income-generating project, though future eggs and ducks. A lesson we learned: it is better to try a new idea with an individual that is willing to be an innovator; if the project is successful, we can scale it up and involve more people or groups.

Everybody jokingly calls the father of the family receiving the ducklings 'water police'. He walks the entire water pipe system for the village to the mountains almost daily, checking if everything is working well, making sure there are no leaks. Should there be e.g. a leak (every water system is bound to break at some time) he has been trained by the water engineers on how to fix it. Being involved with Zahana for such a long time made him the ideal partner for a duckling pilot project.

Another lesson we learned is that despite the best efforts, sometimes nature takes a different turn. Out of the 12 ducklings only two survived. Lucky for us, it was a male and a female. The ‘water police’ was able to raise a few new ducklings since. According to a poultry specialist’s feedback, we might have chosen the wrong time of the year, when ducklings are very susceptible to disease and environmental stessors. We plan to repeat the experiment with the same family in a more favorable season again.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Ducklings with the new owner

Checking out the new ducklings

Feeding the new ducklings

Links:

More about Microcredit

Zahana: ‘Project of the Month Club’ in August '11

Markus Faigle — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 03:44:18 GMT

Dear friends,

We are happy and proud to announce that for August 2011 Zahana is featured in the ‘Project of the Month Club’ at GlobalGiving.

Every month GlobalGiving awards this designation to a new exceptionally high performing project. For August our ‘Solar cookers for the school in Fiadanana’ takes the spotlight on the GlobalGiving website. We are thankful to GlobalGiving for this great opportunity to reach a wider audience of dedicated donors for Zahana.

Please check it out and let all your friends know.

Best regards,

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links:

Solar water pasteurizers in action

Moringa oleifera trees growing strong

Markus Faigle — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:55 GMT

July 2010: Zahana’s Gardner growing Moringa

In early 2010 Zahana introduced Moringa oleifera seeds in both villages. Everything of this beneficial fast growing three can be used. The leaves, high in protein, can be cooked as vegetables. Powdered Moringa leaves have been successfully used in West Africa for decades in infant formulas. The entire seedpods can eaten like beans at a young stage, or bigger and more mature added to soups, as what in know in Indian cuisine as ‘drumsticks’. The ripe seeds can be replanted or used to extract high quality oil. Fast growing, the trees need to be cut constantly to easily reach the leaves, providing much needed sustainable wood for cooking.

The pictures included in this report show how Moringa has successfully taken root in both, Fiadanana and Fiarenana, over the past year. The trees now growing in the schoolyards of both schools were planted with the students as part of our school garden curriculum.

Zahana’s microcredit approach is to hire our two gardeners and pay them for their work year round. This lesson was learned when the original idea of providing the gardeners with seeds and have them sell their seedlings as and income generating project proved not to be feasible. The economic insecurity of this approach was not feasible for our gardeners. Economic security thought a stable income empowers our gardeners to experiment with new crops, to see if something can be grown in their climate successfully, and provides the fruit of their labor for free to their communities. The gardeners have become outstanding teachers, successfully involving students in our school garden project, second to none in the area.

July 2010: Zahana’s 2nd Gardner growing Moringa

OCT 2010: Planting Moringa in schoolyard

OCT 2010: Protecting young Moringa tree

December 2010: Moringa growing well

March 2011: Moringa in the schoolyard

Links:

Zahana Homepage

Thank you for making us a superstar!

Markus Faigle — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:18:12 GMT

Thank you!

We could not have done it without your support! The temptation was big to just send a progress report with two words: “Thank you”. But, we wanted to explain it a bit more:

February 2011 Zahana was awarded “Superstar” status, the highest level an organization can reach on GlobalGiving! Regular progress report by our amazing Malagasy team, combined with your donor support got us among the 30 superstars, a brand new program launched at GlobalGiving.

Last but not least: March 16 - Bonus Day at GlobalGiving:
On March 16, 2011 GlobalGiving is matching at 30% all online donations (up to US$1,000 per donor per project) with $75,000 available in matching funds. The last time matching funds were depleted half way into the Bonus Day, so be ready midnight EST on March 16 if you would like to top off your generous donation to Zahana.

Thank you.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

P.S. Zahana did not get chosen for the Ford Focus test drive in February 2011.

Links:

Zahana Homepage

Zahana’s video & the Ford Focus Global Test Drive

Markus Faigle — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 23:04:36 GMT

Thanks to GlobalGiving’s endorsement Zahana is entitled to compete for the $10,000 prize money in the Ford Focus Global Test Drive. Another creative fundraising strategy to explore, we just submitted a video. Now we hope to get chosen with your help.

If you are on Facebook and would like to support us, the steps are:
Please watch the video “Changing lives in Madagascar” click on “love it” in the bottom and encourage all your friends to do the same. If we get enough “love its” we are in and get the $10,000. We only have until Dec 31, so procrastination is not an option anymore. (If this does not work just send me an email at markus@zahana.org and I forward you the URL by email.) Not on Facebook? Ask somebody who is and most lilely spends more time on it that you wished for...

And while you are on Facebook why not “like” Zahana’s Facebook page as well?

We are in the process of redesigning our own website www.zahana.org, to make it (hopefully) easier to navigate. Please visit if you get a chance and let us know what you think of the new look.

Last but not least with the end of the (tax) year near, we hope you might consider Zahana in your giving as well. You may do so on-line from the links in this update, or you can as always send a good old check in the postal mail to Zahana (see website for details)

For the last minute virtual gift you could always download a Zahana Thank you card and make a donation in somebody elses’ name.

Happy Holidays,

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Feedback from Madagascar illustrated "success"

Markus Faigle — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:11:50 GMT

This was the only water source before Zahana.

Dear Friends of Zahana:

This is a reminder: Thursday, December 16 is Bonus Day at GlobalGiving. Every donation is matched by 50% until they run out of matching funds. Last time GlobalGiving ran out of matching funds for the first time, so please donate early, if you can.

We apologize in case you get this progress report from another GlobalGiving project. This issue is overarching and posted on all three. The latest Zahana report (Nov. 2010) illustrates our definition of “success” quite drastically:

Background: In 2006 the community of Fiadanana built their own water system with help from Zahana. Zahana hired the water experts, who living in the village for two months, taught the villagers how to lay pipe from a ground well in the mountains over a mile away. Seven communal faucets provide clean, safe water to everybody all year round all over the village ever since.

Report from Ihanta in Madagascar: “In Fiadanana where they got safe drinking water in 2006 through seven communal faucets, the impact is tremendous. A key reason why we found teachers willing to move to the village of Fiadanana was the availability of clean safe drinking water. It is the only village in the area that can make such a claim.

Mparany, our Zahana teacher, reported that since he has been living in Fiadanana, no child’s death was reported. The only death in the village was a woman who had surgery in the hospital of Tsiroanomandidy for appendicitis some 2 months ago. Berthine, a member of the women’s group, confirmed that before Zahana in the “hard times period” (époque dure) between the harvests from October to December, it felt like almost every day one child passed away from diarrhea. (She said 26 deaths in 2 months.) She explained that people from Fiadanana now have to carry their water with them if they have to go to another village, since their stomachs don’t feel well drinking the water from the other villages.” (More in our November Newsletter.)

It is Zahana’s guiding development philosophy to make life in the villages so livable and attractive that it is worth staying there with your family working the land. A lot of development problems connected with urbanization and sprawling slums attracting impoverished farmers can be avoided if people are not forced to leave for the cities in an often futile search for a better life.

As you might plan your end of the year giving, we hope that you will remember Zahana (even if you missed “bonus day”). We have ready-to-use Zahana gift cards you can download off our Zahana website as a do-it-yourself project if you want to add a personal touch.

Happy Holidays and thanks for your continued support

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Building the water tank way up on the mountain

A big tank stores the water in the village

One of seven communal water faucets

Links:

Fiarenana’s potato harvest was a great success

Markus Faigle — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 04:43:48 GMT

Showing her potato harvest

Rule of thumb for our microcredit:

If you try it once it is an experiment; A second time if it worked well, as a promising approach; A third time it becomes implemented as a program.

For the second time, the ‘seed fund’ with potatoes has been a great success in our second village (Fiarenana). Each participant got 2 kg (approx. 5 lbs US) of potatoes in June. Potatoes had been planted after the rice harvest in the same fields that are currently being prepared for the next rice crop again. Each farmer was able to harvest between 20 - 40 kg of potatoes from the 2 kilos of seed stock, a great return on our initial investment of 200kg of potatoes. (See our website for last year’s experiment.)

In contrast to the last time farmers did not only eat all the potatoes in the “époque dure”, the hard time between rice harvests. Some sold potatoes in the neighboring small town to get access to much needed cash. In contrast, one farmer, who decided not to sell his crop said: “It does not make sense to sell potatoes in the market and turn around in the market and spent the money on buying rice to eat. So we ate all of our own potatoes instead and it was very tasty”. This is an amazing development in itself, in a culture where rice is the only food considered a “real” meal (see our webpage on rice).

This second time around the Zahana gardener in the village encouraged everybody to keep some of the smaller potatoes as seed stock for the next planting season. He also agreed to continuously cultivate potatoes all year round to test is they can be planted in other seasons as well successfully.

Fiarenena’s harvested potatoes grew big

Zahana's master gardener

Links:

Growing from Seed with the Seed Fund

Markus Faigle — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 03:14:19 GMT

Growing tree seedlings

Zahana has recently hired Bary, a second gardener to work in the village of Fiadanana, or first project site where Zahana’s participatory collaboration started in 2005. Bary is currently being trained by our original gardener in the second village (Fiarenana) and shows an equally amazing green thumb combined with great enthusiasm in planting what he learned right away.

Both of them are growing new tree seedlings. The good news is that both gardeners are happy to experiment. This allows Zahana to introduce new seeds with the caveat that they might not be suitable for the climate, but there is only one good way to find out: grow it and see if it takes. Apples that have been requested by the gardeners are a good example. It is tricky to grow apples from seed that “fall true” or turn out to be a desired variety. To compound the challenge the climate might be too hot for apples, plants that like colder winters or higher altitude in a tropical climate. But with two adventurous gardeners it is much better to try planting apples and find out what happens. In addition Zahana is planting fast growing trees that can be used for firewood so people will not need to walk long distances and kill the existing trees. We are hoping this will help with the ongoing deforestation disaster in Madagascar.

Zahana’s seed fund also introduced new varieties of zucchini, beans and corn from a supplier that claims a 100% germination rate for their seeds. The first zucchini are already big enough to harvest and the corn and beans are doing very well.

In addition to the tree nursery and food crops for farmers, both gardeners are growing vegetables with the children in their respective school gardens. More about that on our website and the progress reports for the schools.

More trees for the future

The new seeds are doing well

Links:

Zebu (cattle) and our villages

Markus Faigle — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:39:16 GMT

Zebu and a carraige in the background

Dear friends,

It is certainly easier to report about the opening of a school or the planting of trees, but on a more somber note, here is the latest sad news from Madagascar.

Our village of Fiarenana was attacked for the third time by ‘dahalo’, or cattle thieves, a few weeks back. They came into the village at night, shouting loudly, throwing stones at the house and firing gun shots in the air. People huddled inside their houses in fear for their lives. They stole 11 zebu belonging to the pastor and 2 other people in the village. Our contact in the village reported on the cell phone: “The entire districts is devastated and in a state of shock, most villages have been attacked and robbed by dahalo at night, something that we have never experienced before in our area. In the village next to us a 15 year old boy was shot dead”.

Note: Zebu are cattle and prized possessions in Madagascar. Poor farmers raise cattle as a living savings account. They need at least two heads of cattle to plow their fields and pull their carriages. Zebus are an important source of milk. For centuries zebu have had great cultural significance and are vital for funerals.

Guns are very uncommon in Madagascar and nobody in the villages owns any firearms or weapons. In the past cattle thieves were very uncommon in our part of the country and armed with sticks they occasionally stole a cow or two grazing at night far away from the village, scaring and making the child watching it run away. People in Madagascar, rooted in cultural traditions, do not go outside after dark if they can avoid it. Since the situation got more volatile, many farmers have gathered all zebu inside the village at night to guard better against cattle thieves, putting them at the same time as risk of a violent attack inside their village. Fortunately for Zahana, people do not feel that they are more prone to fall prey to dahalo because of their cooperation of working with us, the ‘outsiders’.

We apologize if you get this update more than once, but by the same token say: “thank you for supporting more than one of our projects on GlobalGiving”

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

The typical hump that gives the zebu its name

The typical carriage drawn by two zebu

Links:

Bonus Day: Wed. June 16, 2010

Markus Faigle — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:54:37 GMT

Impoved seeds for the women's group

Dear donor to our microcredit fund,

50% interest in one day? Sounds too good to be true? Not really: The GlobalGiving “Bonus Day” is a wonderful opportunity to ‘super size’ your donation to Zahana by 50% at not additional cost.

Thank you! It is your donation that makes our work possible. GlobalGiving has offered Zahana an opportunity to meet generous donors like you we would never meet or reach otherwise. We hope an event such as Bonus Day might entice you to give again, or encourage your friends and family to support our work in Madagascar.

How it works:

On Bonus Day (Wednesday, June 16) your donation to Zahana will be matched by 50% by GlobalGiving. This opportunity is a one-day only event, from midnight to midnight EDT on Wednesday June 16 (Eastern Daylight Time, not your time zone.) All three Zahana projects with GlobalGiving are eligible. (Yes, we will send this reminder again on June 15 and June 16.)

Yes, there is a US$1000 bonus again for the group that raises the largest amount of money and the one who finds the largest number of donors, so please help us make that goal.

The latest exciting news: Zahana was invited to participate in National Geographic’s (yes, the iconic yellow magazine) Global Action Atlas. The Global Action Atlas is a way for National Geographic’s readers to learn and get more involved with projects. With the reach of National Geographic, this is tremendous opportunity for Zahana.

Please visit the Global Action Atlas though our website. National Geographic tracks the click-throughs from our website and recognizes your effort by giving Zahana projects prominent placement.

This was made possible thanks to Global Giving. In April we had a chance to visit Global Giving in Washington DC and give a presentation about our work to the staff. Currently all Global Giving projects are listed on National Geographic’s Global Action Atlas.

Last but not least we have switched our newsletter to VerticalResponse and you can find a link to it below.

Links:

Rice harvest in Madagascar in May 2010

Markus Faigle — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:27:50 GMT

Dear supporters and friends,

Despite the current volatile and complicated political situation in Madagascar Zahana is working in both villages. Our work is needed more than ever. This report by email from May 19, 2010 illustrates the impact of the economic crisis:

“The villagers got a good rice harvest this year, but what is sad is the price, they can get for it. During our last site visit the farmers complained about the price they could get for their harvest. This year they can only get of 360 Ariary per kg (less then 20 US cents per kg, or 10 cents per US pound), while it was over 600 Ariary per kg in 2009. To give you and idea what that means for them: to buy 1kg of sugar, 250 grams of salt and one small piece of soap they have to sale 10 kg of rice. This is beyond unfair, to grow that rice took almost half year, it is a way to kill the farmers and they will consider giving up planting rice at all.

To counteract this trend we decided on a small rice business project with the women’s group. They bought 2 metric tons at 400 Ariary the kg with the help of a generous donor. This time it is a business venture, not for our communal seeds bank. The plan is: the women’s group will sell the rice at a later date when the price will have gone up to 600 Ariary so they benefit from the price increase and can share the cash profit.”

Markus Faigle

Potatoes – An example of microcredit seed fund

Markus Faigle — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:55:13 GMT

A bag of potatoes as seed stock

Dear friends of Zahana,

One very telling example for Zahana’s seed fund is the potato crop introduced to the village of Fiarenana in late 2009. The villagers were provided with 100 kg of small potatoes as seed stock. Potatoes were one of new crop suitable for a diversified crop rotation recommended by the agricultural expert who visited the village in September (?) 2009.

Zahana implemented that suggestion, hoping the potato crop can be sold at the market to generate cash income for the farmers in a season where the rice seedlings are already planted, but the rice ‘cash crop’ is far from being harvested.

The community decided to distribute 2 kg of potatoes to each family. Lists were meticulously kept, and each family was instructed to pay back their ‘loan’ in potato seedlings after the harvest, therefore increasing the community seed fund.

The potato harvest was very successful and over two tons of potatoes were harvested in the village. The only major problem was, admitted the villagers with great embarrassment to Zahana in March, that instead of selling the surplus potatoes, they ate them.

This example illustrates what success means for Zahana. From a traditional microcredit point of view the project is a failure, because it did not generate additional cash income for the farmers as intended. From Zahana’s perspective it was a huge success, because people did not only increase the community seed fund enriching it with a new crop, but also had food to eat in the “époque dure” or the “hard times” period before the rice harvest. The fact the potatoes are very high in vitamin C, is a great public health benefit during the rainy season where people normally go hungry for many weeks.

Thank you for your support.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links: