By Justina Poskeviciute | Individual Giving Associate
In 2023, Health In Harmony continued supporting the Forest Guardian program in Madagascar, a community-led initiative aimed to protect the Manombo Rainforest and monitor its activity.
All sixteen Forest Guardians, Manombo community members employed by Health In Harmony (HIH), received a smartphone equipped with an app for tracking indicators of forest disturbance. After participating in training with HIH in 2023, they now successfully use the app to track forest data and disturbances, including instances of logging, its routes, and forest fires, and delivered datafrom the Manombo Rainforest to the HIH research team. Over time, Forest Guardians will work with HIH research staff to evaluate observations and trends in forest disturbance, a process which is streamlined by using this app!
These observations also inform HIH Madagascar’s Health Incentive system, which communities designed as a way to earn healthcare discounts in accordance with each village’s collaborative levels of forest protection. At the end of 2023, HIH supported seven “red” villages (which receive a 25% healthcare discount), 10 “yellow” villages (which receive a 50% healthcare discount), and 14 “green” villages (which receive a 75% healthcare discount).
The Forest Guardian program remains one of the pillars of HIH’s support of community-designed solutions in Madagascar, and the Health Incentive system represents continued progress and connection between healthcare and rainforest protection. Your support has ensured HIH can continue investing in communities’ solutions like Forest Guardian and Health Incentive programming that elevate and preserve the expertise of the ones who best know the rainforests and are best equipped to protect them.
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