A dedicated micro credit fund for rural Madagascar

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:

• Planting 15000 trees in Madag
• A community school for all (children) in Fiarenana (#3254)
• A dedicated micro credit fund for rural Madagascar (#4497)

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

Links:

• More about Microcredit

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