A community school for all (children) in Fiarenana

Mini-workshops were conducted for our teachers and villagers to properly frame the objectives of the Zahana association. These workshops where conduced by Zahana.

For the preparation of the 2023-2024 school year in our Zahana run schools, lists of teaching materials required have been drawn up with the feedback of our teachers and our parents’ associations.  

The CEPE remains a cornerstone in Madagascar’s public schools. CEPE*, or loosely translated the primary school diploma (see website) is culturally very important in Madagascar. The first students from our Zahana schools successfully received their CEPE in 2009. Donné, of the first group of students with the CEPE, supported by Zahana successfully graduated from secondary school and then the agricultural college, receiving the first diploma in his village. Donné is now teaching at our school in Fiadanana and a key home grown agricultural expert. We had reported about the CEPE over the years, before and during the pandemic.

After discussions and considerations, we decided to offer the CEPE as well in our Zahana schools. After consulting the regional department of education, we decided to buy the teaching materials required to offer the CEPE in our Zahana schools once again (including the public school model curriculum.)

In our community wide assessment, it was decided that the vegetable gardens at the school level are very important in the curriculum. At the same time school gardens reinforce the improvement of the nutrition for our schoolchildren as well as teaching them gardening techniques that can improve their future.

*CEPE = The Certificat d'Études Primaires Élémentaires

Links:

• The CEPE once again in our village's schools
• Cause for a celebration: The first school diplomas ever!! 2009
• Brevet d'Etude du Premier Cycle

Normally our project reports are for specific project. We decided this time to focus on a behind the scenes look what it means to make our reports possible.
 
Zahana is a very small NGO and does not have an office in the capital or rent or own any space or vehicles. This means we need to hire a car with a driver every time we do a site visit. Cars are far too valuable in Madagascar and nobody in their right mind would just hand the car keys to a stranger (like rental car companies do in many countries). Consequently, cars always come with a driver. The driver knows the car and the roads very well and normally stays with the car for the duration of the visit. Over the years many of our drivers have become friends and are supporters of our project. Like during the Xmas celebration they brought clothes their own kids didn’t use anymore for the children in our schools. One of the wonderful and unexpected side benefits.
 
At our site visits we are normally joined by other experts. One particularity in Madagascar: ‘site vists’ are always called ‘missions’ in English a word borrowed from the French. The idea is to come as a lager group, especially for security reasons, as we were recommended to do so and not to travel alone. Often one or two medical doctors or a sociologist with solid experience in community development, join us, in addition to our founder Dr. Ihanta (an MD). They lend us their expertise and for example in the case of medical doctors can very informally provide medical services if needed, as a bonus. This is not an official medical mission, or an agricultural mission, more an exchange of ideas where they get to see what we do, and we learn from them.
 
Coming to each of the villages is not just intended to see people or to plant trees but to talk to them and to discuss many aspects of our cooperation. One person alone couldn’t do that as more people request to talk to us. Besides community wide meetings some want to talk about a very personal affair or matter and want someone to listen to them. In some villages, they even formed a line to meet us before we even got there.
 
Many times, we mention about visiting our projects, but it is difficult to imagine what this means during rainy season. In 2022/23 the rainy season was especially strong so far and started earlier than usual. This might be influenced by the many cyclones that hit Madagascar in the past few months and/or the impact of climate change. The rainy season is expected to last until June in our area.
 
It meant that more rain, many times in unusual months, makes traveling a big challenge. A good part of the site visit from town to town are on paved roads. The last part of our side visit is on unpaved roads. In distance they make up may be 15% of the tip, but in time over 50%. So, we have assembled a collection of photos of the roads and driving conditions in the last six months. A journey that should take and hour in dry condition could become five or more. We hope they might give a small insight into what it entails to make our site visits possible.

We hope you had a good holiday season. The Christmas celebrations in Madagascar are always an occasion to get together and celebrate our achievements. All of our actvities are connected to each other, and all are celebrated at the festivities, so we decided to list them here all.
 
The Christmas Show 2022:
 
It has been a long time since Santa visited the students in 2007 for the first time. Since then, the Christmas celebration has become a big event, not just for our students, but neighboring villages join the activities and fun.
 
Students from both of our schools in Fiadanana and Fiarenana performed Xmas shows and carols for everybody.
 
As it has become also a tradition, ccandies, cookies, a personal cup for the tea time at school and clothes were given to our students in Fiadanana and Fiarenana. New clothes were made by Zahana staff plus some second hand clothes we bought in the city. This year also for the first time gifts included the village of Analakely to their very needy people.

As part of the celebrations four persons from Analakely, Shalom, Fiarenana and Tsaramandroso received an award from Zahana as leaders in family gardening and number of trees planted last season. (See website)
 
Zahana provided mutton for our students as a very special treat for the xmas lunch. This was the first time we offered such a treat swigth meat. In conjunction with the festivities, Zahana worked with the local health center to run its program of DMM (distribution de masse de medicament)which was scheduled for December in Madagascar. DMM is a Ministry of Health program to fight schistosomiasis by giving medicine to children between 5 to 15 years of age. To avoid side effects, as reported during DMM, children must have something in their stomach before taking the medicine, so Zahana provided a good xmas lunch that also was a solid basis for the DMM. Combining health prevention outreach with good nutrition makes it much easier for our students to swallow the pills.

Looking back at the holidays it becomes clear that it is now part of the xmas culture in our villages to start every celebration with reforestation. This is to show how important reforestation is for Zahana and it is a visual manifestation to revitalize the hope for a friendly environment. Reforestation is not an effort undertaken to please Zahana. It’s for the benefit of the local community and for the future generation to come to understand the value of the reforestation in their lives. During the celebrations in every village the entire community was involved in reforestation. In the past years these efforts were lead by the women’s association, or a soccer club, but this time everybody participated.
 
The launch of the community wide reforestation efforts in 2022 already started in November of 2022 (with a much earlier start of the rainy season than usual). In 2021 there wasn’t enough rain left in the rainy season to water the baby trees that were only planted during or after the Christmas celebrations, so we decided to already start with reforestation over a month before the celebrations this year. Consequently, people are encouraged during the Xmas celebrations to keep planting trees at least until January.
 
This proved to be good decision, because this year the rainy season extended into March, providing a lot more water for the baby trees then the year before. 
 
In our past project reports we covered the soccer tournament last June. Working together on a common goal has generated new ideas for the new generation of village youth. New groups of young people are getting together, not just to play soccer/football, but to make a difference in their communities by participating in reforestation and a microcredit culture. Their ideas brought Zahana back to its philosophy on rural university we envisioned almost two decades ago. This exciting new project will be covered in future project reports.

We hope you had a good holiday season.

Making seed balls has become a tradition after our first workshop learnig  the new technique from our freinds and supporters at the Seneca Park Zoo Society in Rochester, New York.

About a year ago, during the winter school break, our students had been making over 2000 seed balls. Our YouTube video shows that it can be a lot of fun to plant trees with the help of seed balls.

Unfortunately, as we reported in our last project report, most of the seed ball seedlings did not survive the dry period after the rainy season. After all, it was an experiment to try something in addition to growing baby trees for reforestation.

The teachers and the students decided to try again this year. Since the rainy season has started earlier than usual the students made seed balls again. Maybe it is just too much fun to miss this creative way of reforestation. We just got some pictures of throwing them into the landscape.

And yes, there are many well crafted apples for donations this time of the year. If you are in the fortunate position to think about donations for 2022 we hope you might consider Zahana at this end of the year.
 
Happy New Year!

Links:

• Throw a seed ball for reforestation

Analakely now has a community secondary school, built by their community.  Analakely already has a primary community school and Zahana helped by paying for wood to make 20 benches and tables, when they first joined Zahana. This school was built to avoid having to send the students who passed the cepe, the final primary school exam, to the next town to attend secondary school. Now students can stay in their village and attend secondary school there.
 
The parent of the students were in charge of the bricks and the construction of the building. Zahana has helped in supporting their efforts buying the corrugated iron roof for the school (and does not pay for the teachers).
 
This 4-year secondary school called community CEG or Collège d'Enseignement Général.
The school belong to the government and has (soon) 66 students and 7 teachers. The salary 2 of the teachers is paid for by the government, the rest by the community and the parents themselves.
 
Secondary school includes 4 years of study. In secondary school the courses are depending on the subjects to be provided not on the number of students. For example, the teacher of mathematics is in charge to teach all 4 different grades, the same for French or English class. In total 7 subjects are provided, with one teacher in charge of each subject.