Improving children's health and education

SEED is excited to continue our work improving child health and education with huge progress at our Sarisambo site, the introduction of Solar at two recent SEED built schools, and celebrating the new mural on our first Green School. 

At Sarisambo the construction of new gender-segregated latrine blocks and menstrual health/hygiene management (MHM) facilities is well underway. Female latrines now reach roof height with just finishing touches on rendering left before construction starts on the roof. The men's latrine pit has been finished with wooden frames completed and construction of the walls due to start. The three-room school building requires a couple more layers of breeze blocks and rock-weaving is mostly complete with the team's efforts coming together as the finishing touches of a veranda are near ready to start. 

Across our projects close work with the community continuously helps us address community needs and support capacity building. MHM education and WASH sessions are helping current and future students adopt health promoting behaviours. Additionally, in two rural schools we have started a Solar Pilot Project, which aims to provide affordable, clean energy and improve the working conditions for students and teachers. With the provision of green energy safety training, we work to empower the community to manage the new technology and move towards a greener future. At one school, the seventh and eighth grade have received a lesson on climate change and added the final touches to the school recently revealing a mural designed and created by the students. 

The communities in which we work are enthusiastic and engaged in the evolution of the Schools Programme, ensuring emerging needs are met, highlighting the importance of SEED’s ongoing and ever evolving programmatic approach in southeast Madagascar.

SEED is excited to celebrate the completion of its WASH and Education Infrastructure project in Esohihy Primary School! From March to December 2022, SEED’s construction team successfully built a three-room school building that will offer a safe and comfortable learning space for Esohihy’s 144 students and four teachers. SEED also built two three-cubicle pit latrines with menstrual hygiene management facilities, a house for the headmaster and their family, and a 10,000-litre capacity rainwater harvesting system which will provide access to clean drinking water on-site. 

The construction team has effectively overcome important challenges throughout project delivery, such as the flooding of the construction site due to heavy rains, levelling the uneven terrain commonly seen in this region of Anosy, and digging through hard clay which takes much longer than other types of subsoil. Despite these challenges, the team has produced a cyclone-resistant school that can now withstand the unpredictable weather patterns which are sadly becoming more common in Madagascar. 

SEED has trained all four Esohihy teachers in delivering WASH education sessions and installed behavioural nudges and a mural on the latrine walls which will aim to encourage healthy hygiene practices amongst students and teachers. The head teacher revealed that the students were all very excited when they first visited their new school, particularly about the new desk-benches to sit on! The central location of the new school will contribute to making education accessible for the entire community in Esohihy, and the structure will provide space to accommodate for the growing student population. 

SEED is excited to update you on the newest construction project of programme Sekoly: the Esohihy Primary School. Beginning in March, the community and team came together to transform the one-classroom school into a safe and healthy space for its 144 students and four teachers. 

The local community has been involved in its construction, beginning with a traditional ground-breaking ceremony where the community gathered and a community leader blessed the land. Community members graciously provided nearby land for the brick maker’s site to help with high transportation costs, and have assisted the team in helping to deliver bricks to the construction site (pictured). Since the ceremony, the project has faced challenges, but Esohihy Primary School is underway and even has plans to be completed by September 2022. 

In early May, heavy rain caused some slight delay as parts of the construction site flooded, but progress continued and after a few months Esohihy Primary school is taking shape! To date, we have constructed three new classrooms, the foundations of the teachers’ housing, six gender-segregated latrines and the beginning stages of the menstrual health/hygiene management facility. SEED has also trained all four teachers in WASH education, built two hand washing stations, and has even added ‘encouragements’ for healthy habits: a concrete path with footprints leading from the latrines to handwashing stations and an informative WASH mural to prompt good hygiene practice. And on top of all of that, a 10,000-litre rainwater harvesting system will soon be installed to provide the school with a supply of safe drinking water. 

Project Esohihy is coming to life thanks to the community and Sekoly team. We look forward to sharing the final construction stages and ultimately the 150 children making use of a more adequate and safe learning environment.

Sekoly Mandiso

Without a designated building for secondary school students, teachers and students of Mandiso Lower Secondary School utilise the dilapidated church and town hall as makeshift classrooms. Due to a lack of sanitation facilities on school grounds, students are forced to share latrines with the community, which are often full, leading to increased rates of open defecation. In February, Cyclone Batsirai and Cyclone Emnati caused severe disruptions to operations, resulting in the immediate evacuation of SEED’s construction team from the field. Cyclone Emnati caused damage to one of the walls under construction at Mandiso and also caused a tree to fall where the latrine blocks were meant to be built. Fortunately, the SEED team were able to quickly rebuild this damaged wall, as well as the remaining walls on the school building. The team also cleared the latrine block site, cutting and removing the fallen tree, giving the wood back to the community for use.

Sekoly Maintso

Within the Sekoly Programme, the production and transportation of building materials to sites produces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute negatively to climate change; disproportionately impacting communities such as Mandiso. Project Sekoly: Maintso (Green School in Malagasy) seeks to offset the carbon footprint of the Sekoly Programme. The emissions produced during the construction of Mandiso School are calculated at 44,640 kgCO2e. In March, SEED planted 350 Acacia mangium trees to offset the emissions over a period of 10 years. An additional 350 trees have been planted in a resource use plantation, providing the community with a sustainable wood resource. Alongside this, 100 fruit trees – including papaya, mango, and soursop – are being planted between the plantations and around Mandiso Lower Secondary School. These fruit trees will provide a sustainable source of nutrition for the school students as well as the wider community.

Despite 63% of children completing primary school, only 35.5% of children in Madagascar graduate from lower secondary school. These issues are amplified in rural schools across Madagascar’s Anosy region, where over half of children aged six to ten years have never attended school. Moreover, 6,900 Malagasy children die annually from water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) related diseases; insufficient WASH infrastructure within schools has contributed to the transmission of deadly diseases amongst children.

SEED’s Sekoly Programme aims to improve health and education in Madagascar’s rural Anosy region by providing education and WASH facilities for 430 students and 19 teachers annually through the Emagnevy Primary School and Mandiso Lower Secondary School. To provide clean water for drinking and handwashing, SEED will install a 10,000 litre capacity rainwater harvesting system- enough to provide two months’ worth of clean drinking water without replenishment. We will also repair the existing well at the site, providing clean drinking water for the wider community.

To complement this improved sanitation infrastructure, SEED will train 19 teachers across the two schools to deliver WASH education sessions. A committee of school staff and community leaders has been established at Emagnevy Primary School to manage WASH and education facilities in the long-term. WASH education training with committee members and teachers was delivered successfully in Emagnevy in November 2021.

The Emagnevy Primary School build is well underway, with the school scheduled to finish on time in February 2022. SEED plans to begin repairs on the existing classroom once the new building is full constructed, with a total of 70 desks and benches having been constructed. At Emagnevy, the construction of three gender-segregated ventilated improved pit latrines and one MHM facility has begun, which will improve safe sanitation access for 350 students and 10 teachers. At its completion, 185 students will be enabled to attend school on a fulltime basis.