Drear friends,

This is the quickest way to reach you and say: “Thank you!”

Thank you for donating to Zahana during GlobalGiving’s “Give More Get More” Challenge. The project will still active with GlobalGiving on their website until it is funded, just without the extra bonus of a match.

We hope you will consider Zahana for the coming holidays and tools such of the gift registry with GlobalGiving make it possible with a few clicks to tell your friends and family about it.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Drear friends,

This is the quickest way to reach you and say: “Thank you!”

Thank you for donating to Zahana during GlobalGiving’s “Give More Get More” Challenge. We started with $15 before the challenge and have been successful. The project will still active with GlobalGiving until it is funded, just without the extra bonus of a match. The school is being built as we speak and if you did not have a chance yet to look at our slide show of the community starting to build their school please do so on our website (link below).

We hope you will consider Zahana for the coming holidays and tools such of the gift registry with GlobalGiving make it possible with a few clicks to tell your friends and family about it.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links:

• Fiadanana' community builds their school

Dear friends of Zahana,

If you considered donating to Zahana again in this 2009 tax year, now (until Dec 1) might be a very good time. This project was invited to join the Give More - Get More Challenge and GlobalGiving will match your contributions incrementally. (The link with more information is on the top part of the project web page.)

Please help us getting these matching funds. Please tell your friends and encourage them to give too.

The challenge details: November 10 to December 1 (but ends Dec 1 at 12:59 EST, not your time zone!)

Matches are staggered based on the amount we raise, or in other words: The more of the total amount of all donation we raise the bigger the match.

We raise up to $2,500: donations will be matched at 30%.
We raise $2,501 - $7,500: donations will be matched at 40%.
We raise more than $7,501: donations will be matched at 50%.

The three projects that raise the most money will receive additional bonuses of $5,000, $3,000, and $1,000.

* Donations up to $500 per individual will be matched by GlobalGiving, so the matching funds don't get depleted too fast.

Thank you.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links:

• More details at the GlobalGiving Give more – Get more
• Zahana's home page

This project has passed the vetting process and is now officially green. Click on the green leaf in the top right corner of the web page to learn more.

Hot off the digital press: Zahana, and its founder Dr. Ramihanataniarivo, are features in the latest issue of Malamalama, the University of Hawai‘i Magazine (Malamalama means 'the light of knowledge' in Hawaiian). We have included the link below and we encourage you to use their “Leave a Response: feature.

We wanted to share this exiting development with you: The inventor of the BlazingTubeSolarAppliance (link below) approached Zahana and offered us to collaborate on using his solar cookers in Madagascar. This innovative solar cooker with a vacuum tube and oil is more efficient than most other solar cookers currently on the market and also works in cloudy weather. The BlazingTubeSolarAppliance is currently undergoing field-testing, and will be manufactured in China. Switching from a prototype hand-built solar cooker to a manufactured model comes with its own set of challenges.

Since we are talking about possibly more than just a few units, the parts will be shipped to Madagascar and assembled there, ideally on location in the village. This will give Zahana the capacity to use solar cooking for all children in the school and expand the project to the second school, currently being built by the village of Fiarenana. We will keep you updated about the progress of this new lead. The current political climate remains unstable in Madagascar and international funding agencies have still put all but humanitarian aid on hold. Zahana has decided months ago that despite our limited resources it is important to continue our work with the rural villagers, since they are not to blame for the events in the political arena. Many existing projects, such as a communal water system and the building of their school have been realized in the village of Fiarenana since then and we encourage you to visit our website for updates and photos.

Zahana has decided to focus on improving wood burning cook stoves before solar cooking can be introduced to the community. Since people will continue to burn wood for their cooking needs, especially in the rainy season, a firm commitment by the community to reduce the need for wood is a pre-requisite before more exotic techniques such as solar cooking can be introduced. Without laying a good foundation and a firm commitment to changing old cooking habits, solar cooking projects internationally were often embraced enthusiastically just to be forgotten within weeks of their launch. This just puts the timetable of introducing solar cookers into the next dry season of early 2010, when hopefully the political situation might have some resolution as well. The teachers and the students are still the cornerstone of implementing this new idea and the new school in Fiarenana will be built and hopefully be filled with children and adults by then. Including the innovative community of Fiarenana in this project makes sense.

The latest news for Fiadanana is that the community decided to build a solid foundation and a fence around the communal water faucets to keep animals out. The pictures below are from the official inauguration of the “new” fences.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. The contact information can be found below under “Who is Running This Project”.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links:

• Malamalama, University of Hawai‘i Magazine
• BlazingTube Solar Cooker
• Building the school - slideshow

Pictures:

• Celebrating the new fence for the communal water faucet (JPG)
• If you don't lock your doors a lock is a prized possession (JPG)

Than you to all of you who supported the solar cooking project during GlobalGiving’s Green Challenge.

We are happy to announce that with your help we tied for third place with the PlayPump project!

Not only is a third place amazing for a small all volunteer organization such as Zahana, but is also comes with an additional bounty of $1,000 from GlobalGiving that gets us that much closer to our goal. The Green Challenge was a great way of getting more exposure for our solar cooking ideas. The project will continue active on the GlobalGiving website until the final goal has been reached, so please let your friends interested in alternative energy uses know about it.

We are looking forward to launching the project solar cooking project in the summer, since the rice harvest starting about now is keeping everybody busy. We hope that by the start of the new school year (in July all schools are on break in Madagascar) we can start cooking with the sun.

We are also working with the inventor of the BlazingTubeSolarAppliance based here in Hawai‘i who is currently improving the prototype and making it more efficient and less costly at the same time. We hope that one of the first field trials of this innovative solar cooker can be in Faidanana.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

Links:

• Green Challnege ledger board
• Blazing Tube Solar Appliance

Right from the start Zahana had envisioned an edible fence surrounding the school. This was intended to enclose the school with a natural barrier for roaming animals and curious visitors that would provide a great source of nutrition and vitamins for the students at the same time. This ambitious project has now yielded the first bananas for the students to eat.

Bananas are very fast growing plants, spreading through the roots, and can yield its first harvest after a year or two. The fast growing bushes provide shade and a possible alternative to trees for much firewood.

Please consider contributing to the Global Giving Green Challenge while the matching funds still last. And thank you, to all of you that helped us to make it to third place so far.

Links:

• Growing the edible school fence in Fiadanana

Pictures:

• Bananas starting the living fence in 2007 (JPG)
• The living fence around the school in 2008 (JPG)
• Harvesting the first bananas of the living fence (JPG)

April 3, 2009

We have great news:
Our project “Solar Cookers for the School in Fiadanana” has been awarded the “Green Leaf” form GlobalGiving and invited to join their “Give a Little Green!” Challenge.

This Green Challenge is by invitation only. Starting Saturday, April 4 and running through Tuesday, April 28, 2009 all donations up to $5,000 per individual made to our solar cooker project will receive an additional 50% match from GlobalGiving*.

In addition to matching funds, Zahana can compete for additional funding! The three projects receiving the greatest number of individual donations will receive extra prizes of $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000, respectively.

We need to act fast! Let’s get the matching funds as long as they last. With a minimum of $10 dollars becoming $15 with the click of the mouse, please consider donating now and tell your friends about this exciting opportunity provided by GlobalGiving.

Please pass this email on within your network.

Ihanta, Jeannette and Markus

PS:
Check out the website of the BlazingTubeSolarAppliance at http://blazingtubesolar.com. We hope to test this innovative solar cooker in Fiadanana as part of our solar efforts as soon as possible.

* That means for every dollar you donate, Zahana will receive another $0.50. The match will be available from April 4 to April 28 only or until $25,000 in matching funds have been depleted. Even if matching funds are depleted, the challenge portion of the campaign will continue until April 28th.

Dear friends,

Some of you read about Madagascar in the news and contacted us, so we wanted to send a short message. Thanks to email, text messaging and Skype we have been in constant contact with our partners in Madagascar and they are fine. One thing becomes obvious: we have to increase our efforts in rural participatory development and education.

Zahana has been focusing on making village life more attractive and livable so people don't have to leave their village in the first place in search of a better life. This can be done for example by providing development partnerships to built access to clean water or a school for their children.

Almost a decade back Madagascar experienced a very tumultuous political situation and as a result many people fled the cities in search of safety in countryside. In the case of the village of Fiadanana, Zahana's pilot village, its population increased by 20% and after the political situation stabilized most of the newcomers decided to stay, since they discovered the advantages of the rural over the city life.

We encourage you to frequent your trusted news sources for more information. We find http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/?search=madagascar&searchheadlines=1 very useful, since it lists many languages as links.

Please write to us directly if you want more information. Please use the email provided at the bottom of the project description.

Zahana has conducted an assessment of solar cookers currently available in Madagascar in December. Having chosen a first model for testing in the school, the teacher traveled to the capital of Antananarivo in February for training in using this model. Unfortunately the political instability caused the training course to be canceled and he went back to Fiadanana as soon as possible, since busses stopped running regularly. Living in the countryside he also had no idea of the turmoil in the capital and was all too happy to be able to leave for home again.

Unfortunately for Zahana we need to wait until trucks are willing to transport the cooker to the village once again and another training for the teacher can be scheduled.